When Australia federated on 1 January 1901, cricket featured prominently in the week-long celebration of the new nation-continent.

Given that Australian cricket embraced this notion of one country long before the formal act of federation - the inaugural Test in 1877 featured players from New South Wales and Victoria against England - it was only appropriate to include the sport in the official festivities.

So on 5 January 1901, New South Wales took on South Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground for a Sheffield Shield match - the competition itself having been devised nine years earlier for the betterment of the colonial game.

The match was almost as phenomenal as the long-awaited feat of federation itself, with New South Wales scoring in excess of eight hundred runs and South Australia going down by a whopping innings and 605 runs.

Fifty years later, a cricket match was again in the thick of celebrations, when the 2 January Test match between Australia and England at the same ground was part of the "Commonwealth Jubilee Year" festivities.

So today on 2 January 2001, in the year of the centenary of the Australian federation, it was only apt to again mark the milestone with a cricket match.

The SCG's custodians had spent more than a year getting their stadium ready for the occasion, and the sell-out crowd clearly appreciated the effort. With Sydney producing brilliant sunshine and perfect summer weather for the day, 40,880 people walked through the turnstiles to join in the festivities.

Before play, Prime Minister John Howard presented each of the players with special caps to commemorate the event, with the words "Centenary of Federation Test Match 2001" inscribed underneath the coat of arms.

Roaming performers in Victorian costumes complete with parasols combined with a trip-down-memory-lane video clip to provide a distinct twentieth century flavour.

The only problem was that this genteel sepia-toned beginning contrasted rather starkly to the loud pop music blaring out at each interval. Running onto the ground in their classic gold braided caps, the players were accompanied by Taxiride's chart topping hit "Get set everybody". It was that sort of a day.

Test cricket is fast becoming peppered with spectators who want to be constantly entertained. And this first day of the Fifth Test was a perfect example of the post-modern overlapping between cricket's age-old traditions and the apparent need in the new millennium for action-packed amusement.

The luncheon break at least took everybody back to the backyard cricket days where time often seemed to stand still. Poet Rupert McCall paid tribute to one hundred years of Australian cricket while the future of this country's cricket ran around the field playing their mini versions of the game.

Later, as they walked out onto the ground to the sounds of the Aretha Franklin song 'Respect', even the lowly West Indian tourists seemed determined to enjoy the occasion, batting through the entire day for only the second time in this summer.

© 2000 CricInfo Ltd