'Dominant' Webster surges into all-round calculations

His coach has declared him Tasmania's "most dominant" player but given his current form, it's perhaps an accolade that could be bestowed on Beau Webster across the entire Marsh Sheffield Shield competition.

While most of the focus – quite rightly – has been on Western Australia's crop of emerging allrounders given their individual and team success over the past three seasons, Webster has quietly been building an imposing record on the Apple Isle.

It's one that's now become too hard to ignore for national selectors with the 29-year-old yesterday ending a seven-year gap between national representative honours with selection in a strong Prime Minister's XI squad to face Pakistan next month.

Webster's hot start to the domestic summer has been a major factor in Tasmania's undefeated start to the Shield season with only his soon to be PM's XI teammate Cameron Bancroft (505) having scored more runs than the versatile right-hander's 487 at 97.40.

In fact, only Bancroft (1450 at 60.42) has scored more Shield runs than Webster's 1083 at 57 since the start of the 2022-23 season after the allrounder finished last summer with 596 runs. And he's also the highest averaging batter (55.54) of those to have batted five or more times in the Shield since the start of the 2021-22 season.

But on top of that, since switching to medium pace full-time, Webster has also become one of Tasmania's most reliable bowlers with 30 wickets in the last two seasons, placing him ahead of Aaron Hardie (28) and behind Will Sutherland (54) and Michael Neser (47) in the pace bowling allrounder tally.

And after turning out for Essex in England's domestic 50-over competition during the winter, where he hit 260 runs at 37.17 with two half-centuries, Webster believes it's the continuous cricket that's allowing him to take his game to new heights.

"I feel like I played a season in England and rolled a bit of form from the end of last year into that, and then straight into the one-dayers and Shield games here (for Tasmania), I think it's just the continuous cricket that's helped me out," he said during their clash with Queensland in Hobart last month.

"I've always been big on playing over training, I think you learn on the fly a lot better and for my game that's definitely beneficial."

On the day his selection in the PM's XI was announced, Tasmania head coach Jeff Vaughan said that Webster – who has represented Australia A twice (against India A in 2016) – was still young in cricketing terms and was doing everything he possibly could to push for higher honours.

"Beau's been our most consistent and our most dominant player so far this season," Vaughan said yesterday.

"He's making runs seemingly every time he walks out to bat, he's bowling really important overs for us (and) breaking partnerships, and he's in the top two or three slips fielders in the country as well.

"He's a young cricketer and got many a year in front of him – some of our best Australian players have started their journey at around 30 years of age."

Following the departures of veteran seamers Jackson Bird and Peter Siddle, along with batter Ben McDermott, it's perhaps been Webster's move to No.6 in the batting order that's had the biggest impact on the Tigers' fortunes this summer.

By shuffling up one spot from previous seasons, it's allowed the Shield ladder-leaders the flexibility to get young seam bowling allrounders Brad Hope, Mitch Owen and Lawrence Neil-Smith into their XI for all five matches.

"(I'm) really pleased for him taking on the number six role for us … to allow two young allrounders behind him," Vaughan said.

"We've had a clear and obvious shift in the demographics of our group over the last 12 or so months, and sometimes opportunity allows the greatest outcomes for players as well.

"We spent a lot of time in the off-season on how we would structure our team, how we would get some exciting young talent into our team, but also how we would set up a team for sustained success over numerous years.

"In first-class cricket, one of the big things we need to do is to take 20 wickets.

"The beauty of having Beau batting at six certainly makes it a lot easier for us that we can play an extra allrounder or an extra bowling option and we've clearly got a couple of exciting allrounders in Brad and Mitch Owen.

"We've been really pleased with the way we've gone about the start of our season – we've played some really consistent cricket, we're obviously playing some players in new roles and players are finding ways to adapt to their new roles.

"They're having a little bit of reward for all of the hard work they been investing in.

"We've done a lot of work off the field as well around how we want to play, how we want to operate and the type of team we want to become.

"Hopefully it's going to set us up for sustained success."

Prime Minister's XI v Pakistan

December 6-9: First-class match, Manuka Oval

Prime Minister's XI squad: Nathan McSweeney (c), Cameron Bancroft, Cameron Green, Marcus Harris, Nathan McAndrew, Todd Murphy, Michael Neser, Jimmy Peirson, Matthew Renshaw, Mark Steketee, Beau Webster

Pakistan squad: Shan Masood (c), Aamer Jamal, Abdullah Shafique, Abrar Ahmed, Babar Azam, Faheem Ashraf, Hasan Ali, Imam-ul-Haq, Khurram Shahzad, Mir Hamza, Mohammad Rizwan, Mohammad Wasim Jnr, Nauman Ali, Saim Ayub, Salman Agha, Sarfaraz Ahmed, Saud Shakeel, Shaheen Afridi

Tickets for the Prime Minister's XI match are on sale here.