Quantcast

Match Report:

Scorecard

Green shoots into Test frame with marathon innings

Young Western Australian bats the entire day against a NSW attack featuring Nathan Lyon in a further boost to his budding reputation

The expectation surrounding Australia's budding allrounder Cameron Green can only intensify following his career-best, unbeaten 185 against a world-class New South Wales attack today.

But Green's Western Australia teammate Ashton Agar – who knows a bit about the pitfalls of hype after he blazed onto the Test scene as a teenager – has urged a more measured response to Green's remarkable feats that already see him rank alongside some of the game's true greats.

Green batted throughout day three of the Marsh Sheffield Shield match in Adelaide and will resume tomorrow with WA trailing the reigning champions by just seven runs and a draw the most likely result with rain forecast for the afternoon.

Given the match situation, the spotlight invariably fell on Green who has been touted as future Test player since last summer but whose all-round potential can be further tapped when he resumes bowling later in the season should his recovery from back problems proceed as planned.

Green bats all day to add to booming reputation

Agar was full of praise for his young teammate who now has four Shield centuries to his name, and gave barely a chance in the face of disciplined and – at times – hostile bowling from the Blues, who were missing their 'big three' quicks Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood.

"The best part about it is he's a great kid," Agar said at day's end with WA 7-436.

“He learns, listens, works extremely hard on his game and assess situations really nicely.

"He looks really calm and composed at the crease, nothing seems to faze him too much so for him to go out and get a really big hundred again is really special.

"Whenever he does get the opportunity at the next level, I think he'll certainly be ready.

"I just hope we don't put too much pressure on him, we just let him go about his business because he's a beautiful player and I think he's going to be an absolute superstar.

Green savours the moment as he brings up fourth Shield ton

"It would be hard not to hear a lot of hype because there is a bit of hype around him. But all I know is that when he's out on the cricket field he's watching that ball as hard as he can.

"He just loves batting.

"The scary part is he's not even bowling at the moment and he's a great bowler when he's up and running. So to be able to play as a top four batsman and a fast bowler is a great combination."

Nathan Lyon, who has sent down 40 overs in WA's innings for a return of 2-112, was equally impressed with what he saw from Green, who reached his hundred with a clinical square drive to the boundary off the Test spinner.

"I take my hat off to Cameron Green, he was very, very impressive," Lyon said tonight.

"The last time I saw him we had the big three quicks bowling at him so it was a different story.

"But he's obviously very, very impressive, he's very clear in his plans and played spin very well.

"He's not flustered by anything, even under pressure he looked quite calm and clear in his plans."

To place Green's achievements to date in statistical perspective, almost 70 players have previously posted four or more Shield centuries in their first 17 matches and in excess of 500 have claimed at least 25 wickets in that same time frame.

But there has been just seven others in the Shield's almost 130-year history to have managed both feats and among that exclusive coterie are some of the game's undisputed greats.

Whiteman continues good form with fifth first-class ton

West Indian legend Sir Garfield Sobers (while playing for South Australia) and Australia Test hero Keith Miller are acknowledged allrounders, but the list also features Stan McCabe, Monty Noble, Norm O'Neill, Phil Ridings and Australia incumbent Steve Smith.

Only Miller and Noble (six apiece) as well as O'Neill and Smith (five) had scored more Shield tons at the same early stage of their gilded careers, while Sobers (92) and Noble (63) could claim significantly more wickets in their first 17 outings.

However, the caveat alongside Green's wickets tally draws attention to his inability to bowl since last December, when scans revealed the early indicators of a stress fracture in his lower back.

Over six foot (in old currency) tall and regularly clocking speeds above 145kph, bowling is regarded by many to be Green's strong suit and in 2017 – at age 17 – he became the youngest player to complete a five-wicket haul in Shield cricket when he snared 5-24 from 8.1 overs on debut against Tasmania.

If bowling is indeed his pre-eminent skill, then he looms as a frighteningly good prospect once he returns to the bowling crease, and even while he's playing as a specialist batter.

After all, he's scored the same number of Shield centuries before turning 22 as had Smith, and the incomparable Don Bradman had 'only' managed seven at that same tender age.

"For young fast bowlers you have to give their bodies time, they're going to hiccups every now and then," Agar said.

"He's tall and bowls quite fast as well so whenever his body is right he's going to be able to manage both pretty well I think."

On a flat, largely unresponsive pitch, the highly credentialled NSW attack struggled to find any obvious weaknesses in the right-hander's game.

Whiteman hits four fours in the over against Conway

When they attacked the stumps, he defended resolutely.

If they offered width in the hope of drawing an edge, he drove with authority on both sides of the wicket.

Lyon's flighted off-spin was smothered by Green's long reach, and anything pitched short but not above shoulder height was smacked with such menace that even Blues' fielders on the boundary were heard to mutter their admiration for his power game.

"He's got a great cricket brain," Agar said.

"They threw everything at him out there – bouncer plan, bowling wide channel, attacking the stumps, Nathan Lyon bowled a lot of overs at him, the best spinner in the world and he had a really solid plan for everyone he faced."

For a while, when the second new ball was hard and the bowlers were comparatively fresh after lunch, Trent Copeland, Sean Abbott and Harry Conway peppered Green and Ashton Turner with short balls in the hope of inducing a false stroke.

That ploy might not have proved explicitly fruitful, but it was the short stuff that yielded the only WA wicket to fall in the first half of another bat-dominated day.

The breakthrough came when Sam Whiteman aimed a pull shot at Abbott – at that stage the only successful Blues bowler – but was through his shot too early on the benign surface and shoveled a chance to mid-wicket.

Whiteman and Green had added 173 for the third wicket and the only real chance of breaking the stand came when Green was 31 and Whiteman pushed Abbott to cover, where Lyon swooped on the ball and attempted to throw down the striker's end stumps while parallel to the turf.

As it transpired, he missed and Green made his ground, with the only casualty from the drama being Lyon who landed awkwardly on his right arm and reported a burning sensation travelling from his ear to his elbow that required a couple of consultations with team medical staff.

"It's all okay, I just landed on the shoulder awkwardly and had a little burner down the right-hand side," Lyon said tonight.

"I can't feel it now, but it should be interesting to see how I pull up in the morning."

Paine tunes up for Indian series with Shield hundred

It did not, however, prevent the Test spinner from bowling and after Turner fell to the short-ball strategy – fending low to gully off Conway – it was left to Lyon to wheel away and create opportunities on a pitch that bore little resemblance to those he used to prepare at the venue.

His toil was eventually rewarded in the 117th over of the innings when he trapped fellow spinner Agar in front, and late in the day he picked up another in similar fashion when allrounder Aaron Hardie fell for five.

All the while, Green remained imperious and impervious at the other end, although he could have been run out for 146 if he had responded to Josh Inglis's call for a kamikaze run that ultimately resulted in the keeper's demise.

Having clipped the ball marginally to the right of Daniel Solway at mid-wicket, Inglis hared off for a single that wasn't there and has halfway down the pitch before scrambling into reverse, by which time Solway's throw had narrowly missed a prone fielder at silly mid-on and been collected by the keeper.

NSW Blues: Daniel Hughes, Nick Larkin, Kurtis Patterson, Moises Henriques, Daniel Solway, Jason Sangha, Peter Nevill (c, wk), Sean Abbott, Trent Copeland, Nathan Lyon, Harry Conway

Western Australia: Cameron Bancroft, Sam Whiteman, Shaun Marsh (c), Cameron Green, Ashton Turner, Ashton Agar, Josh Inglis (wk), Aaron Hardie, Matthew Kelly, Cameron Gannon, Liam Guthrie.