Future bright for new-look Vics despite final loss

Victoria might have made the long flight home from Perth to Melbourne without a Marsh Sheffield Shield in the cargo hold for the second summer running, but men's team coach Chris Rogers has reason to feel they are squarely on the path to greater success.

While Western Australia sealed consecutive Shield wins fielding a line-up with just one change from the 2021-22 decider – retired Shaun Marsh replaced by eventual player of the match, Ashton Turner – almost half of Victoria's starting XI differed from a summer earlier.

In addition to injured pair Nic Maddinson (knee) and Travis Dean (shoulder on match eve) and opener Will Pucovski (mental health break), they left out veteran spinner Jon Holland and allrounder Jon Merlo.

Rogers' expectation therefore rests on the comparative youth of the team Victoria took into the final, with the exception of incumbent Test pair Peter Handscomb and Scott Boland.

Although Boland remains the standard-bearer of a bowling attack that was largely responsible for the five consecutive wins that took them to the final, the other key members are season-leading wicket-taker Will Sutherland (aged 23), Mitch Perry, Fergus O'Neill and Test spinner Todd Murphy (all 22).

But Victoria's batting stocks are also being radically re-shaped, with left-handers Ashley Chandrasinghe and Campbell Kellaway thrust into key roles against a near-Test strength opponent in the biggest game of their maiden first-class seasons.

It's been more than three decades since a team went into a Shield final with a younger pair than Kellaway (20 years 142 days at game's start) and Chandrasinghe (21 years 96 days), and that was 19-year-old Darren Lehmann and 20-year-old Joe Scuderi when South Australia also met WA at the WACA in 1988-89.

With Handscomb's return from the Qantas Test tour of India, Kellaway was elevated to the pivotal number three batting berth for the first time in his nascent first-class career and faced almost 100 balls against WA despite returning scores of 6 and 7.

The former Australia under-19 representative, who bears some similarities to ex-England opener turned ICC match referee Chris Broad with his flowing curls and perfectly upright stance, might have been disappointed with his single-figure scores but his coach was anything but.

"A lot of older guys don't get these opportunities, and he's figuring out answers to questions he's lucky enough to be getting right now," Rogers said after the game, having spent an hour chatting with Kellaway prior to the final day about what he had gleaned from his first Shield final experience.

"I look at a kid who probably tried even too hard in this game.

"He was almost fighting so hard he wasn't giving himself a chance to score, and that's great learning.

"He's going to get so much out of that.

"He's going to be a very important player for us for a number of years and I see a really big future for him."

Chandrasinghe also finished the game feeling some dissatisfaction with his effort, despite etching his name into history as only the second opener (after Tasmania's Jamie Cox) to carry his bat through an innings in the season decider.

He had been told by Rogers days before the game he would be omitted from Victoria's starting XI, but received a last-minute call-up when Dean hurt his shoulder at training on match eve attempting to take a diving outfield catch (coincidentally hit by Chandrasinghe).

The epic 400-minute, 280-ball unbeaten knock of 46 Chandrasinghe ground out in Victoria's first innings polarised reactions, but Rogers could only marvel at the commitment shown by the rookie opener against WA's potent pace attack on a challenging day one pitch.

The last visiting opener to bat throughout day one at the WACA after his team was sent in was Queensland's Jimmy Maher who went to stumps unbeaten on 111 in 2007-08, the final season of his prolific 14-year first-class career.

Having scored a marathon 119no (from 333 balls faced) in his maiden Shield innings against Tasmania at Hobart last October, Chandrasinghe had struggled to recapture that form as rival bowlers picked apart his uncomplicated technique.

It was partly Chadrasinghe's diminishing returns, as well as a reluctance to have three left-handers at the top of the order against WA's left-arm swing king Joel Paris, that saw him squeezed out of Victoria's preferred XI only to be told of his late recall shortly before he went out to bat on Thursday.

"Probably the person who was most disappointed was himself," Rogers said of Chandrasinghe's first innings that yielded a scoring rate of 16.42 per 100 balls faced.

"He doesn't want to play that style of cricket, he wants to be scoring runs.

"There's room for improvement in his game but I think it's a measure of the man that he can bat for a whole day.

"So many young guys would get into that position, almost feel a bit embarrassed and just throw their wicket away.

"But the fact he fought all the way through and didn't get out, I just think that's an attribute you can't teach.

"You can teach the technical stuff and help him along with that, but that determination and will to never quit that's something that's quite in-built.

"I'm so proud of him for the way he went about it.

"I think it's an extraordinary effort and he's got attributes I think we can build on."

Rogers conceded that watching WA lift the Shield at his team's expense for the second consecutive season "bloody hurts" and added he was mindful that finishing second in grand finals mustn't become a habit.

But he also revealed he spoke to his young group after the mid-season BBL hiatus, having earned a solitary win from their first six Shield matches of the summer, and reminded them of the journey they were collectively undertaking to try and lower their gaze from the prize they sought.

"We didn't talk about winning games of cricket, we certainly didn't talk about playing in a Sheffield Shield final and to win those last four games, five on the bounce with a predominantly younger team as well, I think that's quite exceptional," he reflected at season's end.

"I'm just really proud of the way they've gone about it.

"They've played with probably discipline that's beyond their years in some respects, and they've had a lot of fun doing it.

"And I think as a group we are going to get better, and that's quite a big positive for us."