Win, lose or drown, this rain is welcome fire relief

The biggest downpour of rain that Sydney has seen in more than a year will likely extend the Stars’ BBL title drought.

Curator Adam Lewis looks out at a wet SCG which will likely result in the washout of the Big Bash final Picture: John Feder

Peter Roebuck was a magnificent cricket writer. His prose was powerful and poetic. He was opinionated and informed. He reckoned he wasn’t paid enough by his masters, so one day in India, he pounced on an opportunity, presented by the weather gods, to pocket a few extra dollars. My only regret was that I was not so quick off the mark. There was one day to go in the Chennai Test of 2004. India needed 309 runs for victory. They had 10 wickets in hand. An excitable curator at MA Chidambaram Stadium could not have been more helpful if he had spent the night paving the pitch in fresh concrete. The hosts were in tip-top shape. But there was bound to be turn and irregular bounce on a fifth-day track, and Australia captain Adam Gilchrist had SK Warne and GD McGrath at his disposal, and a couple of decent part-time spinners in DS Lehmann and SM Katich. The visitors had hope. A draw was the least likely result. Roebuck woke in the middle of the night and peered out his hotel window. He witnessed a deluge like you could not imagine. He went to reception and inquired about the forecast. He was told, “Monsoon, sir.”

Watch LIVE coverage of the best international & domestic cricket on KAYO with FOX CRICKET’s unmatched commentary line-up. New to Kayo? Get your 14-day free trial & start streaming instantly >

Play goes ahead: Melbourne Stars won the toss and elected to bowl against Sydney Sixers in their Twenty20 clash at Sydney Cricket Ground on Saturday night after rain delayed play for about an hour.

It was about 2am in Chennai. About 6am in Sydney. Bookmakers were asleep in more ways than one. Roebuck rang a mate in Australia and told him to back the draw with everything he had. And perhaps put a few dollars on for him. I woke about 7am in the hotel where room service had delivered me an ironing board instead of naan bread — the perils of an Australian accent on the subcontinent — and thought the world was ending in a great flood. I had breakfast with Roebuck. He told me what the draw was paying back home. I tried to put every cent I had on it. I think the odds were 5-1, maybe more. To hell with the morality of not punting on games we were covering. Were there rules on it back then? But I couldn’t get on the internet. I kept slamming the refresh button on my laptop — get through, you bastard. But by the time I could get on, betting on the draw had been suspended. And then it was paying $1.01. Not a ball was bowled and Roebuck laughed all the way through breakfast … and to the bank.

The final of the Big Bash would seem similarly doomed. The Big Splash. Has a cloud ever hung over a game like this before? We’ve known about the cats-and-dogs forecast for a week. Congratulations to the Sydney Sixers on winning the competition, which will be the upshot of a washout on Saturday night. The Melbourne Stars have been crazily optimistic in even boarding their flight. Deep mid-wicket may need a stand-up paddle board. Gully may need a periscope. Fast bowlers may need a 4WD to get to the crease. Twelfth man? They’ll need a merman. The Stars’ skipper? Flipper.

Has such an immovable cloud — cumulus, to be precise — ever hung over a match like this? It’s been bucketing down in Sydney since 8pm on Thursday. It has not stopped since. It is not forecast to stop any time soon, and unless Cricket Australia announces another way of finding a winner — darts, Uno, Monopoly, rocks-scissors-paper, egg-and-spoon race, tug-o-war — Sixers captain Moises Henriques will hold aloft the trophy while hiding beneath a magenta umbrella.

Five overs per side will be enough to constitute a game if the scheduled 20-over marathon is not possible. They cannot sit around until 4am on Sunday hoping for a break in the weather; it has to be played between 7.15pm and 10.45pm.

“Completely expecting at least some game of cricket to go on,” Henriques said on Friday. “Considering you only need a five-over game to take place, a little opening in that 3½-hour window to get a game in.

To the suggestion during his press conference that the SCG already looked “half-flooded”, Henriques said: “I think there’s some cities that are flooded that would be offended by you thinking that’s half-flooded. That’s going to be cleared up in an hour-and-a-half, as soon as the rain gets a bit lighter. Hopefully tomorrow’s rain comes today … you don’t want the match being not played. ”

Stars captain Glenn Maxwell may end up doing a Shaun Pollock if the Big Bash goes 20,000 leagues under the sea. The Stars’ attempt to win the BBL is becoming as cursed as South Africa’s bid to win the cricket World Cup.

In 2003, Pollock famously watched the rain tumble down at Kingsmead, washing away another tournament while a devastated Pollock put his face in his hands. Maxwell may be similarly sunk. If the Bureau of Meteorology, and the flights of cockatoos, and the upside-down tree leaves, and the mound-building ants, the lying-down cows, the aching joints, the crescent moon, the floods in India, and every other old wives’ tale about rain is correct, the Stars have put a new spin on drowning their sorrows.

A butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil and the BBL final gets washed out. The outlook? Monsoon, Maxi.

The Sixers beat the Stars last week to earn hosting rights for the decider. It’s too late to cover the SCG in a tarp. The Stars’ MVP from the qualifying final, Nick Larkin, said of the likely damp squib: “We’d be disappointed (to lose in that way) but they’ve (Sixers) earned the right to be hosting the final.

“We can’t control the weather so, you know, whatever the length of the game, we’re going to just go and give it a crack. If it intervenes, what more could we have done than beat them down here? We had that opportunity and we didn’t take it.”

Pity about the precipitation and the puddles. A bugger that it’s already bucketed down. What a shame about the showers. Win, lose or drown, the BBL’s two glamour clubs facing off like Cindy Crawford and Linda Evangelista on a catwalk would have been worth the price of admission. All 48,000 seats were sold. But if the BBL final becomes the match that never was, who could be too gloomy? There’s no money to be made in backing the draw, but you bet there’s a silver lining. The land is nursing third-degree burns from bushfires. Every drop of rain looks like gold.