O'Neill strikes late to set up enthralling final day

It's high among the hoariest in cricket's voluminous book of cliches, but rarely has 'the first hour tomorrow will be crucial' rung quite so true.

South Australia enter the final day of their Marsh Sheffield Shield encounter with Victoria needing a seemingly straightforward 209 runs with seven wickets in hand to secure a vital outright win heading into the mid-season break.

But that equation is made considerably more complex by knowledge gleaned across the first three days that batting is problematic when the ball is hard, shiny and nipping of the raised seam and that is precisely what Victoria's bowlers will have in hand when play resumes.

Their most potent threat looms as right-armer Fergus O'Neill who, having waited 14 first-class matches to claim his first five-wicket haul, is now eyeing a second in as many innings having bagged all three scalps as the Redbacks finished the day 3-49 from 15 overs.

From the home team's perspective, their hopes rest heavily upon their best-performed batter of the summer to date Nathan McSweeney (14no) and Test 'keeper-batter Alex Carey who looked in good shape with a couple of crisply struck boundaries to finish unbeaten on 11 from 14 balls faced.

Should the pair continue their partnership beyond tomorrow's opening hour, SA might well assume favouritism given batting has become a far less vexed matter once the ball reaches 30-plus overs as was shown through the middle phase of Victoria's second innings.

That was when ex-Test opener Will Pucovski put together his most productive knock since the back-to-back double centuries that took him a Test cap three seasons ago, as he forged crucial partnerships with former Peter Handscomb (44) and emerging batter Campbell Kellaway (44).

But as SA's leading wicket-taker for the Shield summer Nathan McAndrew pointed out after Victoria lost 6-45 from 53 deliveries – most of which fell to the second new ball after tea today – the fact SA's bowlers were able to stop their rivals' scoring momentum set them up for tomorrow's victory push.

"I thought they probably missed a trick there, not going through the gears a little bit," McAndrew said at day's end.

"We always thought we were one (wicket) away from cracking it open, and especially that breakthrough of Kellaway before the new ball was massive.

"We've seen it's a new-ball wicket so the first 25 overs has been really key in every innings, and after that the air has really dissipated out of the ball.

"So big job in the first hour tomorrow morning to hopefully get through unscathed, but as we saw today once the ball got through that 25 or 30-over period it really flattened out.

"It's still a really good wicket, it hasn't devoted-up like some of the other surfaces we've played on here so do some hard work early and reap the rewards after."

With both teams occupying the bottom half of the Shield ladder nursing two wins apiece, this match represents a crucial chance for one of them to head into the mid-season KFC BBL hiatus with a realistic chance of pushing for a final berth.

SA's target might have been significantly skinnier if not for Pucovski's patient hand, which returned his first half-century since the 2021-22 Shield final following which he has endured long absences from the game due to injury and personal circumstances.

"It was a bit of a grind and I probably never felt properly in, or in any rhythm but sometimes you've just got to cop that and get on with it," Pucovski said this evening.

"It has been one of those years, in fact it's been a tough couple of years being in and out and just trying to get some consistent cricket under my belt.

"That's been my main objective, and it's been a huge positive and something I can take going forward and I know once I spend some time in the middle I can get that rhythm back.

"I feel I've made a couple of decent contributions on some tough-ish wickets without getting the runs I would have liked.

"When you're not making the runs you'd like you doubt yourself a bit, but it's important to understand it's the ebbs and flows of any cricket career.

"It's a little learning experience for me."

After Victoria collapsed to 3-27 in the opening half hour of day three, Pucovski and Handscomb negotiated a testing session in which they battled to score at more than two runs per over before reaching lunch at 3-104.

When Handscomb's ungainly attempt to evade a short ball in the first over after the break yielded a simple catch to short-leg, SA sensed their chance to push deep into the visitors' middle-order but were stymied by Pukovski and 21-year-old Kellaway.

The pair added a hard-fought 82 from almost 40 overs and looked to have taken their team to a position from where defeat might be an outside chance before Kellaway's dismissal in the over prior to the arrival of the second new ball.

That breakthrough – with the left-hander failing to cover an arm ball from SA off-spinner Ben Manenti that speared between bat and pad and crashed into the top of middle stump – came against the run of play given spin had barely played a role on the seamer-friendly track.

But having prised apart the set pair, the Redbacks roared back into the match to claim 6-45 from 53 deliveries, 51 of which were bowled with the second new ball.

Pucovski was the first to fall victim in Wes Agar's first over with the replacement ball, adjudged lbw to a delivery that nipped back from outside off stump and which the right-hander seemed convinced would have bounced above the wicket.

From there, Victoria's lower-order adopted the 'hit out or get out' approach that had worked so well for 'keeper Sam Harper who plundered the second-fastest 150 in recorded Shield history yesterday, only to find the second part of that philosophy rang truest.

Harper couldn't repeat his heroics of the first innings and, after a glorious cover-driven boundary, holed out to square leg to set the pattern for the remaining batters.

Skipper Will Sutherland fended a bouncer to gully, and tailenders O'Neill and Peter Siddle skied catches in a search for late boundaries as the lead inched past 250.

Any thoughts the victory target of 258 was a formality were removed in the second over of the chase, when O'Neill followed his maiden Shield five-for in SA's first innings with the wicket of opener Jake Carder for a duck in the second.

Realising that batting would continue to be fraught while the ball was still new enough to nip around, Carder's opening partner Henry Hunt played an array of shots that brought four boundaries in his 33-ball knock of 23.

But to the right-hander's obvious fury and the delight of the disbelieving Victorians, Hunt lost his wicket in near identical circumstances to his first innings dismissal when he shouldered arms to a ball from O'Neill destined to pass well outside off stump and dragged it back on to his wicket.

When skipper Jake Lehmann bunted a sharp return catch to Victoria's destroyer from the first ball he faced – completing a wretched stretch of 43 runs from his past eight Shield innings – the Redbacks all-too-familiar top-order frailties had rendered the victory target an even greater challenge.

Sheffield Shield 2023-24 standings