'Squad mentality' has Redbacks primed for an upset

While he admits his team is a few years away from being at the peak of its powers, South Australia captain Jake Lehmann believes the Redbacks have enough players in form to cause a Marsh Cup boilover.

Their opponents – an unbeaten West Australian outfit boasting 11 players with international experience in their 13-man squad – are raging favourites heading into today's Marsh One-Day Cup final at the WACA (12.05pm AWST).

It will be South Australia's first finals appearance since the 2017-18 50-over decider – also against WA – and the state had been anchored towards the bottom of the table since, winning only 12 of 68 matches across both men's competitions until turning their fortunes around this season.

Lehmann acknowledges that it's "always going to take someone's best game to beat WA" and the resurgent Redbacks outfit will use the opportunity to continue the development of their emerging list.

"Over the last couple of years we've really tried to build a squad mentality and not rely (solely) on Travis Head and Alex Carey and those type of players to get us wins," Lehmann told reporters in Perth.

"I think we're going a long way with that now with the likes of Daniel Drew, Wes Agar, Spencer Johnson is coming along massively this year, even Nathan McSweeney is putting (together) a couple of good seasons back-to-back now.

"We feel like we're building and hopefully this is a stepping-stone into building something strong."

But the 30-year-old – who was thrust the Redbacks captaincy only 11 days ago after Henry Hunt stepped down to focus on his batting – also believes his side is "there for a reason" and wouldn't simply be making up the numbers in today's final.

"We all know that WA is probably the strongest white-ball team that we've seen for probably the last five or six years," he said.

"But we do feel like we have probably good individual players performing at the moment and if we can play as a team, then obviously we're a chance.

"If you come to WA and beat a strong WA side in a final … that just breeds confidence for not only the last Shield game (of the season) but going into next year and the years to come.

"It's massive for our group and we strongly believe that we have the group here to challenge WA."

It certainly will be a strong WA side they come up against at the WACA today with Mitch Marsh, Marcus Stoinis, Ashton Agar and Josh Inglis all departing after the match to join the Australian squad in India for the three ODIs following Thursday's Border-Gavaskar Test series finale.

The only players not available for the reigning champions will be Lance Morris and Cameron Green who are already in India with the Test squad and Jhye Richardson who was due to be part of that one-day international series until reinjuring his left hamstring in his return to Premier Cricket last Saturday.

Veteran Shaun Marsh is also unavailable with a finger injury but hasn't played any one-day cricket this summer to focus solely on the Marsh Sheffield Shield in what could be his last season for WA.

WA skipper Ashton Turner said it was a "really rare situation", and he couldn't remember the state ever having a full list to pick from in the past four years.

"There's going to be a lot of challenges for the selectors to put a final XI down on paper but naturally that's the challenge of being part of a good team," Turner told cricket.com.au's Unplayable Podcast ahead of the final.

"It's then the responsibility of the 11 players selected to go out and live up to their potential and we've talked a lot about wanting to perform in big games and we're really fortunate to have the opportunity to playing in another final with an opportunity to win another one-day trophy for Western Australia."

Should WA secure an unprecedented 16th one-day title today they will keep alive the possibility of a rare back-to-back sweep of all three men's domestic competitions after the Perth Scorchers won a second straight KFC BBL title last month.

"We expect ourselves to win every competition that we enter and this year is no different," Turner said.

"We feel like we've been playing really good cricket and we deserve the right to be given the opportunity to play in a final and we know that if we play to our ability we're going to be really tough to beat."

Marsh Cup final squads

Western Australia: Ashton Turner (c), Ashton Agar, Cameron Bancroft, Jason Behrendorff, Cameron Gannon, Aaron Hardie, Josh Inglis, Matthew Kelly, Mitch Marsh, Josh Philippe, D'Arcy Short, Marcus Stoinis, Andrew Tye

South Australia: Wes Agar, Jake Carder, Daniel Drew, Henry Hunt, Spencer Johnson, Jake Lehmann (c), Ben Manenti, Nathan McAndrew, Nathan McSweeney, Harry Nielsen (wk), Liam Scott, Kelvin Smith, Henry Thornton