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We’ve had 10 rounds of the Sheffield Shield season in the books, and there have been some seriously impressive performances and some total duds.
Read on to find out who my top performer of the season was, the rookie with the best year, the best state side of the year, the state team with the most potential, the total flop of the year, the players who did not perform their best, the best XIII of the year, and finally, who took out Player of the Year from the Sheffield Shield.
Top performer of the season – batting: Beau Webster – Tasmania. 914 runs in 17 innings, average 65.28. Undoubtedly Webster’s coming of age, he has been an aggressive middle-order presence for Tasmania.
Top performer of the season – bowling: Chris Tremain – New South Wales. 50 wickets in 18 innings, average 15.9, strike rate of 38.24. If none of the first-choice Australian quicks were available, Tremain would have to be near the top of the replacement list. A solid performer for years, 50 wickets demonstrated his immense capability.
Top rookie player (less than 10 First-Class matches at the start of the season): Ollie Davies. What a season Davies has had! 754 runs at an average of 53.85. Many are already sizing him up for higher honours. Let’s see whether he can continue this form.
Best state side of the year: Western Australia – the Warriors are a side that is not afraid to drop people who are out of form and replace them with in-form players creating depth and putting every player on notice.
State team with the most potential: New South Wales – It pains me as a Queenslander to see them listed here, but New South Wales has the makings of an excellent side superbly led by old campaigner Moises Henriques. They will win a Shield title in the next three years.
Beau Webster of the Tasmania Tigers. (Photo by Steve Bell/Getty Images)
Shonky award (state): Queensland – What happened to the Men in Maroon this year? Even with Marnus Labuschagne, Usman Khawaja, Matt Renshaw and Michael Neser in the side, their performances were not up to scratch. Queensland needs to refresh its mindset and attitude heading into next season.
Shonky award (player): Michael Neser – Reflective of the previous award, Neser’s performance this season (14 wickets at 37 with the ball, SR of 80 and 140 runs at 36 with the bat) is far down on his past two seasons and bowling-wise is substantially below his career averages (24) and strike rate (51). Let’s hope that this season was just an anomaly for a man who’s had a stellar first-class career. Runner up: Josh Philippe
Donkey award (state): Western Australia wins this award for facing 1612 overs across the season. That’s just over 3.5 Test matches of overs.
Donkey award (player): Corey Rocchiccioli wins this award for bowling 396.0 overs, the equivalent of bowling for just over four days and one session in a Test match. Cameron Bancroft wins this award for facing 1997 balls or 332 overs, the equivalent of batting for almost four days in a Test match.
How is this selected? I went back through the teams for all 10 rounds of the Shield and worked out how many players featured more than once.
I looked at overall performance in the context of the season (i.e. how many matches they’ve played vs. performance) and I’ve taken into consideration how their performances impacted the match result each week.
A player who played fewer than four matches was ineligible for consideration.
1. Cameron Bancroft
2. Nick Maddinson
3. Sam Whiteman
4. Nathan McSweeney
5. Oliver Davies
6. Beau Webster
7. Jimmy Peirson
8. Joel Paris
9. Corey Rocchiccioli
10. Scott Boland
11. Chris Tremain
12. Mark Steketee
13. Charlie Wakim
Overall Sheffield Shield Player of the Year: Beau Webster.
Thanks for reading this entire series. It’s been a pleasure bringing it to you. Bring on the 2024-2025 Sheffield Shield series.
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