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Opinion
Victoria has gone on a remarkable five-match streak on the back of disciplined bowling efforts from a young pace brigade, along with blistering batting displays from Matt Short,.
The result has been a berth in the final of the Sheffield Shield against favourites Western Australia.
Following the completion of the first half of the season, Victoria looked to be in a rebuilding season, having in six attempts only won one game, which came in the final fixture against New South Wales before the onset of the Big Bash.
During Victoria’s struggles, Matt Short was fighting to keep his place in the team after a disastrous first leg of the Shield where he averaged 14.42 with the bat.
Since the BBL break, the Vics have featured at least players five players aged 23 or under in every game of their unbeaten run. Quicks are at the centre of this youth movement, particularly with the absence of Scott Boland to international duty.
Scott Boland. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
Victoria have relied on the bowling performances of stand-in captain Will Sutherland, who is only 23 years of age, and 22-year-olds Mitch Perry and Fergus O’Neil.
In the four matches that Victoria won where Australia international Scott Boland did not feature, their oldest pacers were 23-year-olds Sam Elliott and Sutherland. In these matches, the highest score they allowed was 260, posted by NSW, in the game before the start of the Big Bash.
Since the BBL break, the pace trio of Sutherland, Perry, and O’Neill have gone to another level. In tandem with veteran spinner Jon Holland, the Victorian quicks have run through Shield batters. They bowled Queensland out for 175 and 185, South Australia were rolled over for 114 and 190, while NSW only made 203 and 130.
Since the end of the BBL season, the highest innings score Victoria has allowed in the Shield was 236, posted by Western Australia who possess three of the top eight run scorers for this season in Cam Bancroft, Hilton Cartwright, and Sam Whiteman.
Sutherland, Perry, and O’Neill all helped support Boland, who returned from India to take match figures of 8/98 off 40.5 overs. Sutherland took 3/33 off 12 overs in the first innings, while Perry and O’Neill took 3/44 and 3/52 from 15 and 21 overs respectively. The trio of pacers aged 23 or under undertook combined match figures of 9/192 off 80 overs at a bowling average of 21.33 and economy rate of 2.40.
In the second leg of the Shield, Sutherland took 13 scalps with a bowling average of 21.07, O’Neill claimed 16 victims with an incidental average of 16, and Mitch Perry has been on a tear taking 22 wickets at 13.86.
On the other side of the Victorian line-up, Matt Short has taken his dominant form in limited-overs cricket and replicated it in the red-ball game. With the absence of captain Peter Handscomb due to international duty and Nic Maddinson suffering an ACL tear during the BBL, Victoria needed Short to step up with the bat and provide experienced opener Marcus Harris with some much-needed support.
Short delivered and then some.
Short went from averaging 14.42 to raising his season average to 44.92. In just seven innings, the right-hander from Ballarat has piled on 483 runs at an average of 80.50.
An ardent supporter of ‘Bazball’, Short has demonstrated an attacking mindset and taken the game on, with his 483 runs coming in just 666 balls at a strike rate of 72.52.
The destructive right-hander isn’t just scoring these runs on flat pitches either. In a performance that earned him man-of-the-match honours against South Australia, Short’s 70 off 69 deliveries and 119 from 135 balls came on a green mamba where only one other player in Ben Manenti passed 50.
Short has also demonstrated the ability to tough it out during tough periods and play a more patient inning when required. He scored 58 off of 114 balls in the second innings against Queensland to help set an unassailable target of 350. Against NSW, Short scored 104 from 196 deliveries on a deck where the next highest score was 53 posted by Marcus Harris.
The dramatic turnaround in batting returns for Short, along with the wicket-taking abilities of the young pace trio, has helped Victoria return to the Shield Final, where they will look to get their revenge on a WA outfit that bested the Vics in last year’s final.
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