The WACA may be poised to announce the appointment of Justin Langer as their new head coach at some point on Wednesday, but Adam Griffith is making a pretty decent fist of steering the ship in the meantime.
Stepping into the breach following Lachlan Stevens' resignation last week, the former Tasmania paceman has overseen the Warriors' best display of the Sheffield Shield season to date.
Extending their first innings total to 400 before lunch on day two, the home side then reduced South Australia to 6-209 in reply, leaving their interim coach understandably delighted.
"It's been good to see," he said.
"They've come back really well after the Victoria game last week.
"We spoke about building pressure and being better for longer than the opposition this week and apart from a little lapse with the ball in the middle session today, I think we've been strong and really focused with what we've done.
"We talked about batting in partnerships and sticking together and we've seen that today and yesterday."
Mitchell Marsh played a key role in Tuesday's morning session, helping steer his side from their overnight score of 7-327 to 9-400(dec) and Griffith felt that the 21-year-old showed great maturity in his knock of 73.
"The pleasing thing for Mitchell was that when Nathan (Coulter-Nile) was going hard, he had the ability to back off, drop a gear and control his innings a bit more and not take the lead role in that partnership which is what he's accustomed to doing," Griffith said.
"That was really encouraging for us to see him mature in that way.
"Mitch needs to let his actions speak for themselves now.
"He's been fantastic today with his 70 odd and now two wickets as well, so hopefully that's the sign of some maturing on his part."
Marsh was of course one of the Warriors players caught up in the off-field incidents that captured so much media attention in recent weeks, but Griffiths feels that both he and the team in general, have made a fresh start.
"We've spoken long and hard over the last week about moving on now and starting a new chapter," he said.
"There was a bit going on and the team did get distracted a little bit, but we've made a conscious effort to move on from that and I think we've done that this week."
That will be welcome news for Langer when he takes up the reins with his home state and he could well inherit a side fresh from securing their first four-day victory in what has been a forgettable campaign thus far.
"I don't know how long it's been since 400 was scored in the first innings here at the WACA," said Griffith,
"So that's really crucial and now we've got six of them down, they've got a long way to go to catch us.
"I also think it's important to point out that the two sides we played and lost to at the start of the year, New South Wales and Victoria, happen to be very good sides with a lot of Test players in their bowling attacks in particular and obviously that makes them very hard to beat."
First Posted 14 November, 2012 11:53AM AEST
