Brendan Doggett remains an outside chance for next week’s Sheffield Shield final, while Victoria are agonising over which quick to leave out, with Fergus O’Neill set to return.
South Australia and Victoria shook hands at tea on day four of their dress-rehearsal at Junction Oval, a rain-affected stalemate that left the focus squarely on Thursday, 26 March, when the same sides meet for the title.
Doggett, sidelined by a side strain since February, had been tracking well, but Redbacks coach Ryan Harris cooled the optimism.
“Probably unlikely,” Harris said. “He was having to catch up this morning I think with the medicos back home. I haven’t had any contact with them. So we’ll get back tomorrow and assess on Thursday.”
Under Cricket Australia’s trial rules, an injured player can be substituted during the final, yet Harris was cautious about relying on that safety net.
“He’d have to have a scan to make sure it’s healed, and then he’d have to bowl probably two days in a row,” Harris said. “And he’s been bowling. He did feel it, I think, the other day, a little bit. But again, he kept bowling.
“If he’s injured you probably wouldn’t play him. I don’t think I want to go in thinking I’m going to substitute a player in a final halfway through. We’ll give him every possible chance and have a look at it.”
Should Doggett be ruled out, Wes Agar is the logical replacement. Agar has managed a back niggle through March; Harris expects him to test the injury in Adelaide grade cricket this weekend. If he comes through, he strengthens an attack that already features Jordan Buckingham and Nathan McAndrew.
Spin also entered the Redbacks’ calculations after Victoria’s Todd Murphy collected 4 for 53 and South Australia’s off-spinning pair Nathan McSweeney and Ben Manenti shared five wickets between them.
“We’ve already had a discussion about that yesterday, about potentially bringing him down and bringing him in,” Harris said of leg-spinner Lloyd Pope. “We’ve got a big selection meeting on Thursday. I think seeing the conditions that were here, definitely it’s a thought that we probably might bring him. But again, the team at the moment, everyone’s playing pretty well, so it’s hard to leave someone out to bring him in. So we’ll assess all that. Nathan bowled pretty well. He’s another option. I know he goes the same way as Ben Manenti but we’ll talk all that through on Thursday.”
Victoria’s conundrum is even tighter. O’Neill, rested this week after a heavy workload, is almost certain to slot straight back in. That leaves Mitchell Perry and Sam Elliott – both in excellent form – jostling for one place.
Coach Chris Rogers was upfront about the difficulty.
“I think that that’s fair. I think that those two guys probably know that as well,” Rogers said. “Both have been outstanding this season. I think both have averaged pretty much under 20, at least up until this game. So, yeah, it’s a really, really tough call.”
The numbers underline the headache. Perry has 34 wickets at 18.9; Elliott, 28 at 19.7, plus valuable lower-order runs. O’Neill, meanwhile, tops Victoria’s averages with 30 wickets at 17.2 and offers metronomic control that Rogers prizes for finals cricket. Leaving out either Perry’s bounce or Elliott’s swing feels brutal, yet the balance of the attack – alongside Scott Boland and Will Sutherland – demands only three frontline seamers if Murphy is to partner part-time off-spinner Matt Short.
Rogers hinted at conditions guiding the final verdict. The Junction Oval surface this week offered gentle pace, but turn and variable bounce arrived from day two. With another match starting inside nine days, extra wear could aid spin further; Murphy’s five-wicket match haul will not have gone unnoticed by both camps. If the pitch does slow, Victoria may be inclined to favour Elliott’s ability to reverse the old ball over Perry’s new-ball nip. Equally, clearer skies in late March could produce a firmer surface, pushing selectors the other way.
Aside from selection intrigue, the drawn match provided few clues. Marcus Harris posted a compact 83 for Victoria, Travis Dean a laborious 71, while Jake Fraser-McGurk flashed to 54 for the Redbacks before rain ended any chance of a result. Both coaches left content enough: their bowlers avoided heavy workloads and, crucially, no fresh injuries surfaced.
Quietly, South Australia chase a first Shield crown since 1995-96; Victoria hunt a seventh in 11 seasons. Neither side, though, wants to talk legacy yet. For now, the conversations revolve around rehab reports, net sessions and, on Thursday morning, two starkly different team sheets.
