Travis heading in right direction

Against the unfamiliar backdrop of Darwin's Gardens Oval last month, a potential future star of Australian cricket reached a very important milestone.

After several agonising near misses, highly-rated South Australian Travis Head finally posted three figures for the first time in senior cricket.

His 100-ball innings of 108 in the National Performance Squad's loss to South Africa A barely created a ripple for most, but it was especially important to Head given his recent history.

Three times at the beginning of last season, Head was dismissed in the 90s.

Not three times over the course of the entire summer; three times in consecutive Sheffield Shield innings.

For a young player who had never scored a century at senior level, posting successive scores of 92, 98 and 98 would have been, at the very least, incredibly frustrating.

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As much as West End Redbacks coach Darren Berry tried to play down the importance of the milestone, the impact it had on the then 19-year-old was obvious.

"It certainly did get to him when he got into the 90s on three occasions and couldn't convert," Berry told cricket.com.au this week.

"I tried to take away that focus on the number and focus more on how he was batting.

"But the young kid was so upset after the third time that it did become a bit of a problem and it probably affected him last year, to be perfectly honest.

"Hopefully getting the monkey off the back will release him and let him play with freedom.

"Because that's the kind of player he is; he's a free player."

While Head told cricket.com.au that his quest to reach the milestone hadn't weighed him down, the way his form dramatically tailed off last season suggests a different story.

After his third score in the 90s last November, the left-hander’s Sheffield Shield season average was 65.67 from four matches.

He then managed 72 runs in five innings before the mid-season break for the KFC T20 Big Bash League, and just 38 runs in three innings after the BBL before he was dropped from South Australia's side.

Head’s drop in form mirrored that of his team, with the Redbacks failing to win a Shield game after the mid-season hiatus to fall out of contention for a place in the final, a dramatic slip given they were unbeaten before Christmas.

Berry says the way domestic season is scheduled, with Shield cricket suspended mid-summer to cater for the BBL, was partly to blame for Head's drop in form.

"He developed a technical glitch in his game that became obvious to everybody," Berry said.

"I think this probably developed due to trying to play in the Twenty20 game, which is my big concern with cricket at the moment.

"We break for two months for the Big Bash League and young players are so desperate to play in it and they play very differently than they do in Shield cricket.

"And then they have to drop the Superman suit and go back into Shield cricket mode, which is very, very different.

"And it'd be fair to say a young player like Travis didn't cope with the transition between the two last year."

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So concerned were the Redbacks about the potential impact the BBL would have on Head's game that Berry and former SACA general manager Jamie Cox recommended the youngster skip the tournament and focus on first-class cricket.

But Berry says the lure of the Big Bash League on a young player, and the overtures of other BBL franchises, forced his hand.

"Unfortunately, he had advice from others who said, 'You're a talented kid, you should be playing (in the BBL)'," Berry said, without specifying exactly who had advised Head to play.

"He's a young kid and with the bright lights of the Big Bash League, he wanted to be involved.

"So we kept him involved (with the Adelaide Strikers) last year. We weren't prepared to lose our most exciting talent (to another state).

"We kept him, he only had a little bit of a taste ... he only played one or two games and that was a deliberate ploy from us."

The incursion of the Big Bash League into the Shield season is something that Berry and Head will have to deal with again this season, with the coach giving a strong indication that the youngster will be off limits to other BBL sides and play for the Strikers again in BBL|04.

While frustrated at having to change formats mid-season again, Berry is hopeful that Head won't repeat the mistakes of last season.

And now that Head's chase for an elusive hundred is over, the coach is confident that centuries in Shield cricket will be forthcoming this summer.

"We've spoken about handling it better this coming season and things that we may do differently in preparation during the Big Bash League to ensure that the Sheffield Shield is not affected," Berry said.

"Because for me, still, producing Test batsmen of quality is the number one priority and I see him as South Australia's brightest light and our most exciting young talent coming through.

"He's a really good kid, he's a clean striker of the ball, he's very talented and he's just got to learn to bat for long periods because if he does, he'll really hurt opposition sides."