Tasmania

Ricky Ponting made his first-class debut for Tasmania at eighteen, and by the time he had finished playing for Australia the Tasmanian Tigers had stopped being the state everyone else's Sheffield Shield draw felt sorry for.

Between 2010 and 2013 Tasmania won the Shield twice more, in 2010–11 and 2012–13. The one-day record reads just as well: the McDonald's Cup in 1978–79, the ING Cup in 2004–05, and the Ford Ranger Cup in both 2007–08 and 2009–10, the last two finals both won against Victoria.

David Boon and Tim Paine came through the same pathway as Ponting, and Bellerive Oval in Hobart, known commercially as Blundstone Arena, has watched all three go on to keep wicket or bat for Australia. The ground itself holds 20,000, modest by mainland standards, but it was also where Tasmania played its way out of thirty years on the outside.

South Australia remains the team Tasmania measures itself against, a rivalry with no name attached to it beyond the Shield table both sides have spent decades climbing. There is no derby history to draw on, no shared city to fight over; only the same competition, contested since the trial year of 1977, in which Tasmania went from the state left off the fixture list to one with three titles of its own.