Before taking to the MCG Victorian stand-in skipper Nic Maddinson put his own poor start to the domestic season down to “the flows” of cricket.
Those flows have turned in to a tidal wave of disappointing efforts from the former Test batter and his teammates who once again failed to come to grips with a wicket which had more than a tinge of green on Thursday.
After being rolled twice for 195 runs, total, in Queensland last week including a first innings of just 63, the Victorians, minus Peter Handscomb and Marcus Harris who have more than 800 runs between them this season, collapsed yet again to be 6-67 midway through day one.
With former Test skipper Tim Paine relegated to 12th man for the visitors, veteran fast bowlers Jackson Bird (3-9) and Peter Siddle (2-25) turned the screws on Victoria, the latter returning to the MCG to show the team which pushed him out they had made a significant mistake.
Last season Travis Dean was named joint Shield player of the year, but in becoming the first of Bird’s victims the opening fell for a third successive duck, after two in Brisbane.
Maddinson then came and went in a fashion which has become all too familiar for a batter who started the season hoping to put his name in the national selection radar.
Instead of doing that the left-hander is on the fast track to being completely forgotten having fallen in single-figures three-times in seven Shield innings which have yielded just 85 runs.
Only 20-year-old Campbell Kellaway, making his Shield debut, withstood the onslaught from the Tasmanian attack.
“That’s cricket and you have to ride the flows of it sometimes,” Maddinson said of his horror run.
“It’s disappointing in terms of runs and the way I started … it feels like a long time since I’ve made 100.
“I don’t think it’s through lack of training, I feel like I’ve got a method that’s going to work, it’s just the game sometimes.”
**********************************
DAY 3 AT THE SCG
Ugly batting collapses have become all-too regular in the Sheffield Shield this season and now NSW and can be added to the list with only a late rally from Western Australia avoiding a complete horror for both teams at the SCG.
After rolling through ladder-leaders Western Australia for just 233 on a spinning Sydney pitch on day one, the home team was rocked by fast bowler Matt Kelly who tore through the top-order before they were all out for just 93 after lunch on day two.
But given their chance to bat again the visitors also fell victim to an SCG pitch Australia’s Test players will be crossing their fingers is overgrown and nothing like the wicket served up when they play South Africa in January.
Veteran NSW quick Chris Tremain fired early and WA slumped to 3-6, then 4-11 and 7-45 before D’Arcy Short (39 not out) and tailender Charlie Stobo (36)stopped the rot.
But after their 60-run stand was ended by Chris Green, who added five second innings wickets to four in the first, WA was quickly all out for 127
All told there were 20 wickets taken for 220 runs on the spicey SCG deck which replicated a few of the other difficult wickets teams have encountered all around the country in the first half of the Shield season.
Earlier WA quick Matt Kelly snared three wickets inside the opening 10 overs of the NSW innings to have them 3-17 then 7-65 at lunch before spinner Corey Rocchiccioli took the final three wickets, including Hughes for a team-high 30 to dismiss the home team in just 38 overs.
The limp effort with the bat comes after NSW was also rolled for just 76 in a one-day game against WA last month, and 18 months after they were dismissed for a record-low 32 by Tasmania in a Shield game in March, 2021.
NSW have been dismissed for under 70 four times since the turn of the century, including being all out for just 64 against Tasmania in 2020.
In the last round of Shield games Victoria were bowled out twice inside two days by Queensland, racking up just 63 in the first innings.
A Queensland line-up featuring Test batters usman Khawaja and Marnus Labuschagne was also dismissed for only 97 in a clash against WA in Perth.
The limp effort with the bat comes after NSW was also rolled for just 76 in a one-day game against WA last month, and 18 months after they were dismissed for a record-low 32 by Tasmania in a Shield game in March, 2021.
NSW have been dismissed for under 70 four times since the turn of the century, including being all out for just 64 against Tasmania in 2020.
In the last round of Shield games Victoria were bowled out twice inside two days by Queensland, racking up just 63 in the first innings.
A Queensland line-up featuring Test batters Usman Khawaja and Marnus Labuschagne was also dismissed for only 97 in a clash against WA in Perth.
In Adelaide South Australia’s batters dug in to force a draw with Queensland as the teams shook hands at the earliest possible point on the final day of their clash.
The home team was on the back foot from the outset, crumbling to 5-25 in he opening session on the first day at the Adelaide Oval but their second innings was more positive as unbeaten half-centuries from Nathan McSweeney (77 not out) and Jake Lehmann (68 not out) steered them out of the final day danger zone.
When the draw was called, SA was 3-246 in its second inning, 146 runs in front of Queensland with no prospect of a result.
Lehmann, who was captaining the team in the absence of Travis Head, said it was about bring “gritty” as the continued to search for their first win of the season.
“It was always going to be hard to play a positive brand of cricket when you are 5-25 in the first session of day one,” he saif.
“From then we’ve had some good chats about trying to be a little bit more gritty, a little bit more team orientated, really drive that, and hopefully you can see that through to this batting today.
“Hopefully it’s good steps forward.”
*******************************
DAY 1
Turning down a lucrative payday in Abu Dhabi for the chance of a belated Sheffield Shield debut proved a golden move for globetrotting T20 gun for hire Chris Green.
The abundance of cricket being played, including a Prime Minister’s XI clash with the touring West Indies, and international limited overs and impending Test matches has provided a catapult for some around the country into their state teams.
Green, 29, a perennial and sought-after attendee of T20 tournaments around the world, was one keen to put on white clothes and don his very first “baggy blue” after being included in the NSW side for the SCG clash with Western Australia.
And after taking 4-20 in his domestic one-day game in more than four years last week, Green was in the wickets again with the red-ball, snaring the first three WA wickets at the SCG, then added a fourth when he had Josh Philippe stumped in a star turn.
Green, who opted against playing in the T10 league this year when told he could be in line for a NSW debut, was one of two new spinners unleashed with who leg-spinner Toby Gray also playing on a seriously spinning wicket in Sydney.
Between them the pair of tweakers took seven wickets to roll ladder-leaders WA for 233, Green snaring 4-71 and Gray 3-58 on the opening day.
IN ADELAIDE former Test opener Joe Burns fell just short of the perfect celebration in 100th Shield game for Queensland when he was run out for 85.
Burns, 33, who made a century on his Shield debut for the Bulls against the same opponents at the same venue in 2011, was cruising towards a 20th first-class ton before his 237-ball stay was ended.
Queensland looked like powering away from SA’s first innings total of 240 before Nathan McAndrew got the redbacks back in to the contest with a five-wicket haul.
The fast bowler snared 5-83 to reduce the visitors from 4-213 to all out 342, a lead of 105 which the home team made a good start of reeling in.
When rain stopped play late on day three, SA was 1-69 and needing to set something for Queensland to chase on the final day at Adelaide Oval.