All-round class lifts Blues to top of the table

New South Wales have surged to the top of the Marsh Sheffield Shield ladder after in-form allrounders Moises Henriques and Sean Abbott combined to reel in South Australia's last-day target with 11 balls to spare.

Abbott's 83 from 102 balls crowned their commanding batting effort, and even though he was dismissed within two runs of victory as he aimed a heave over mid-wicket the 29-year-old still boats a batting average of 75 in a remarkable Shield campaign to date.

He is also NSW's second-highest runs scorer for the season behind Henriques who remained unbeaten on 78 (from 95 balls) as the Blues laboured over the final couple of runs after Abbott's departure.

When Travis Head declared his team's second innings closed shortly before lunch, the Blues faced what seemed a challenging target of 294 from a minimum 72 overs on an Adelaide Oval pitch that held few fears for batters.

And after a solid start from David Warner (69 from 106 balls), Henriques and Abbott – who was elevated in the batting order as reward for his irresistible recent form – put together a 141-run stand for the fourth wicket to secure victory having chased the game from the opening day.

The Blues six-wicket win lifted them marginally above Queensland at the top of the table, with matches against Tasmania (in Hobart) and the Bulls (Wollongong) remaining before the competition final scheduled to begin on April 15

"It's never great to lose a game of cricket, particularly when we did drive the game for the most part and set the game up to try and find a way to win," Redbacks coach Jason Gillespie said tonight.

"The surface didn't change too much throughout the contest and didn’t break up, so it didn’t necessarily get more challenging to bat.

"We could have just kept batting going into day four and bat the game to a draw, but we felt there was an opportunity to force a result and we had to get enough runs on the board to get NSW to play some shots in the hope that it might create some opportunities.

"It did create some opportunities, but we weren't able to grab those."

SA, meanwhile, remain rooted to the foot of the ladder where they have finished for the past three seasons even though they came agonisingly close to their first win of the summer in Perth earlier this month and held the whip hand for all but the last day against NSW.

But ultimately it was their inability to claim opposition wickets – they have yet to bowl out a team this Shield season – and failure to hang on to crucial catches that saw the opportunity for a breakthrough win slip through their fingers.

The fact those fielding lapses came against NSW's most dangerous batters, Warner and Henriques, compounded the Redbacks' frustration after they drove the game and set up a result when they might have easily played dead today to avoid defeat.

Warner had begun his team's pursuit in blazing form, helping himself to three boundaries from the 22 deliveries he faced in the five overs before lunch and continued in an even more expansive mood after the interval.

Having reached 40, he attempted to pull seamer David Grant over mid-wicket but got the ball high on his blade and it flew to mid-wicket where Daniel Worrall got two hands to the chance at full stretch above his head but was unable to hang on.

Warner reached 50 soon after, from 62 balls faced, but misread a wrong-un from debutant left-arm wrist spinner Joe Medew-Ewen and his top-edged pull shot was well caught by Grant running in from the deep mid-wicket rope.

But it was Grant's misjudgement of a skied chance offered by Henriques on 28 that would turn the game.

After NSW's first innings bating hero Kurtis Patterson dragged the first ball he faced after tea on to his stumps, the Blues struggled to regain momentum in the face of some disciplined bowling from new-ball pair Worrall and Chadd Sayers.

Worrall regularly beat the outside edge of Henriques and Abbott – promoted above Daniel Solway to number five as a clear indication of NSW's desire to chase the win – without reward while Sayers was typically frugal in conceding 16 runs from his six overs to start the final session.

And it was an attempt to break his hold that led Henriques to aim a pull shot that yielded a top edge that hung in the air for seconds as Grant and Harry Nielsen converged from opposite directions, before Grant made a final desperate dive and it fell from his outstretched right hand.

From that moment, the result became increasingly inevitable.

Henriques found his rhythm and took to Medew-Ewen's spin, launching the 23-year-old rookie for two sixes in an over to reach his half-century from 61 deliveries before Abbott notched the fifth 50 (plus a century) of a remarkable Shield campaign after a couple of seasons as a bona fide tailender.

Having begun the final session needing to score at more than 4.2 runs per over, by the time the minimum 16 overs of the last hour rolled around that rate had been whittled to less than 3.4.

Victory was achieved at 5.45pm as the powerhouse Blues, now eyeing a home Sheffield Shield final, made light work of the run chase on a pitch that seemingly became easier to bat on as the match progressed.

Certainly, the assignment set them by SA's bowling attack – which is still to claim 10 opposition wickets in a bowling innings this Shield season – was completed with minimal angst.

The Redbacks plans to force the pace from the start of the final day suffered an immediate setback when opener Jake Weatherald fell to the second ball of the morning, in virtually identical circumstances to his dismissal on day one.

With Nathan Lyon bowling around he wicket at the left-hander, Weatherald was squared up as he retreated deep in his crease.

The only difference from his first innings' demise was the ball that carried on with Lyon's arm kissed the top of Weatherald's off stump directly whereas last Saturday it had brushed his back leg on the way through his defence.

There was also a haunting familiarity in the dismissal of SA's first innings century maker Alex Carey, to whom the home team were looking to lift the run rate as skipper Travis Head mulled the timing of his declaration.

Carey had purred to 21 from 25 balls faced including consecutive boundaries from drives through the off-side against Mitchell Starc before surrendering his wicket in the next over.

Having knocked Lyon to backward point, the Australia ODI keeper took off for a single as Patterson's throw hit the non-striker's end stumps with Carey adjudged out of his ground.

Despite his apparent belief he had safely made it, the scorebook shows it's the 28th run out the left-hander's been involved in across almost 200 innings in all forms of top-level cricket (domestic and international) to date, with 12 of those resulting in his own demise.

When Harry Nielsen's attempted pull shot off Josh Hazlewood looped to the keeper, SA had lost 3-45 in just over 11 overs and found themselves wedged between the need to increase their lead with urgency and the fear of being bowled out quickly thereby paving a path to a NSW win.

So Jake Lehmann (35no off 48 balls) and Chadd Sayers (12no off 33) defied the Blues' attack until half an hour before lunch when Head called a halt, leaving NSW a challenging case at just over four runs an over after the scoring rate for the match had hovered below 3.5.