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New South Wales have almost all all their fingers on the Sheffield Shield 2013-14 title and nothing short of a major miracle can allow Western Australia to even harbour anything otherwise. The final day of this match will continue on Tuesday and you can follow its live blog from 10 am AEST today.
Western Australia had an outside chance of making a late comeback into the game but a rained-off fourth day all but erased that opportunity.
Less than 14 overs were possible on the fourth day before the rains came down and the players were left with no option but to return back to the pavillion and wait. The play never resumed.
New South Wales lost the wicket of Ben Rohrer in the available time and added 13 runs. Steven Smith and Kurtis Patterson will resume their innings on the fifth and the final day, with the Blues ahead by 326 runs and a reasonably flat-looking pitch awaiting them.
There have been periods in the game when there has been help for the medium-pacers by way of either conventional swing or reverse. But while that will be the sort of news that the Western Australian bowlers would look forward to, they could face an issue.
At almost 26 overs, the ball’s not new any more. On the other hand, with the amount of moisture around, reverse-swing may be equally difficult to extract. With spinners having had no say in the match so far, it’s difficult to see how the Western Australia Warriors bowlers can pull this near-heist off.
Then there’s a threat of rain again. The weather forecast is quite poor and the teams would be lucky to get the entire quota of 105 overs in on the final day as well.
It could, therefore, be a chance for individual glory apart from the Blues looking to celebrate the title victory.
Captain Steven Smith will have a golden chance to push on to a three-figure score, having scored a 75 in the first dig, while the likes of Kurtis Patterson and Peter Nevill will hope to get something under their belt after first innings failures.
On the other hand, Jason Behrendorff has already scalped six wickets in the match already and will be gunning for a 10-wicket haul – a difficult task on a flat pitch but a probable one alright.
Join me for this Sheffield Shield final on Tuesday and you can follow the live score of this game from 10.00 am local time and post your comments below.
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