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.
Best XIII of the year
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.
DaveJ
Roar Rookie
Well done.
Don Freo
Roar Rookie
Davis?
Pierro
Roar Rookie
If Webster reproduces shield form at this level next season and head is not averaging over 30 I agree with your point there Jeff . Why not pick the all rounder in front of the batting failure over 12 plus tests
Pierro
Roar Rookie
Yawn more state bias from don, the author listed rocchicolli in the xv and you bag out Ollie Davis . If they’re not from dons wa world he doesn’t want to know. You’re now comparing Nathan Lyon to him who may end up a world top 5 wicket taker . Don Delusional as always.
Pierro
Roar Rookie
The state bias never ends with Donny . Ollie Davis was superb and a great talent for Aus coming up
BigGordon
Roar Rookie
Sobers, Kallis, Miller, Dev, Imran Khan, Hadlee, Akram, Benaud, Stokes, Ashwin, Jadeja - nah, none would get a run in my team :laughing:
Gibbo
Roar Pro
In response to your critiques, yes nobody really stood out at 3. Charlie Wakim was probably the standout no. 3, but I couldn’t leave out Whiteman for Wakim. It didn’t make sense to do that. Re: Tremain, all wickets this season have been relatively bowler friendly, but the SCG deck has been friendlier to quicks than it otherwise has been in many seasons. On flat decks, he may struggle, but I’d imagine that he’d be much like Boland in that he’d just put it on the spot ball after ball.
Redcap
Roar Guru
Congratulations to WA - a dominant, clinical performance, once again.
Gibbo
Roar Pro
I was just criticising WA for doing exactly that, but then they rolled them cheaply.
Don Freo
Roar Rookie
If they don't concede the game and head to the WACA bar.
BigGordon
Roar Rookie
Yeah, your boys are simply too good for sure Jeff. They'll try and bat all day today and ask Tassie to chase 600. IMO the crucial innings was that first knock by Cooper Connelly. He gets out cheaply and Tassie's chasing 250, rather than 350. A very promising player by the looks
Jeff
Roar Rookie
Guessing WA bats to halfway through day 4 with a lead of 500 then sends Tassie back in. Or maybe WA just bats on. WA has the points advantage re the draw, so maybe they’ll just bat on as long as possible.
Jeff
Roar Rookie
I can kind of understand the thinking, that there was the potential to maximise seam on the first day, which was certainly there, but the execution to marry with the opportunity was lacking But after that execution failed, it has then left Tassie with the near impossible task of batting last, chasing a big target. Perhaps the conservative approach of batting first would have been the way to go; that notwithstanding it was a good first day seaming pitch, unless Tassie was certain it could execute on day 1, then batting first was probably the better defensive position to take. Easy said in hindsight of course. But all said, this WA side has a lot of depth and knows its home conditions very well. So was always going to be an uphill battle for Tassie or any side, playing at the WACA in the final.
Ace
Roar Rookie
a fair comment Jeff a lesson you can't have playing WA on their own deck. Not sure why you wouldn't bat first anyway but .......
Jeff
Roar Rookie
It's curious isn't it? If a player is a top line batsman, they seem to get discounted if they can also be called an "all rounder". If a player can execute both batting and bowling skills, well gee, wouldn't you want your side stacked with all-rounders?
Jeff
Roar Rookie
Yep, great work Gibbo re your contribution to the Shield season ????
Jeff
Roar Rookie
Rocchiccioli! Still reckon he will end up MoM after the 4th innings :thumbup:
Jeff
Roar Rookie
Think it's over red-rover BG.
Jeff
Roar Rookie
All good Ace. It's tough for bowlers to come over to the WACA and be on-song from the start re getting used to what line/length/approach to execute. As much as Tassie wanted to maximise first use of the ball on day 1, they just couldn't seem to get it right and that's probably when the outcome of the match was determined.
Ace
Roar Rookie
Well Gordon, if the Jackjumpers can get up then I'll remain optimistic Thanks for the support