O'Neill's perfect 10 lands crucial win for Victoria

Fergus O'Neill entered what Victoria identified as perhaps the most crucial game of their Marsh Sheffield Shield season to date having never before bowled at Adelaide Oval and without a first-class five-for to his name.

But the yeoman seamer – whose defining passions are bowling, batting and bling, in that order – finished his maiden visit to one of the game's great stadia with a career-best performance in his team's rousing win over South Australia that lifted them to third on the Shield standings.

O'Neill's match figures of 10-111 coupled with the 48 runs he contributed across both innings on a challenging pitch would have earned him player of the match honours had teammate Sam Harper not blasted the second-fastest 150 in the competition's history to take the prize.

And while O'Neill was chuffed to finally break through for a five-wicket bag in his 14th first-class appearance, he took greater pleasure from contributing to Victoria's third win of a season that began with consecutive innings losses having reached last summer's Shield final.

"The boys were getting into me a little bit," O'Neill said after Victoria withstood a spirited victory push from SA's final batting pair Wes Agar and Brendan Doggett who belted 49 from six overs.

'I got a couple of four-fors back-to-back, so they were getting into me that I can't finish it off.

"It's good to get it out of the way, but it's the 10 for the (second) innings that we were worried about.

"We pencilled this game in as a very important one going into the back half of the season, against a very good side so to get over the line by 23 runs was awesome."

O'Neill's previous experience of bowling in South Australia was at nearby Karen Rolton Oval, on a pitch that has been previously considered something of a heartbreak highway for seamers, so he was keen to test his skills set on a track that is regarded as the most sporting in the country.

"I had pencilled this game in," said O'Neill, who revealed Adelaide has now assumed status alongside his home deck at the MCG as his preferred pitch.

"Sidds (teammate Peter Siddle) has obviously played here for Australia and for the (Adelaide) Strikers and he said to all us boys 'this is the greatest ground you'll play at'.

"So we were all very excited to play here, and seeing how (SA quicks Jordan) Buckingham and (Nathan) McAndrew and Wes (Agar) had been bowling throughout the season we knew this was hopefully a good opportunity for us to cash in ourselves."

The difficulties for batting on the Adelaide Oval surface became starkly apparent on day one when, after 40mm of rain fell delaying the game's start by more than four hours, Victoria collapsed to 4-29 and then 5-67.

That was when the game's turning point arrived, with Harper caught at second slip for just three only to be reprieved by Agar's overstepping no-ball.

The Victoria keeper-batter's subsequent 151 off 104 balls proved the difference between the evenly matched teams, with SA ultimately failing to reach today's victory target of 258 despite Test keeper Alex Carey's eye-catching 81 and some last-gasp fireworks from the Redbacks final pair.

"That hurt," SA coach Jason Gillespie said of the no-ball call after his team's loss that saw them slip to second-to-bottom on the Shield ladder.

"We would have had Victoria 6-71 at that point, and then he (Harper) goes on and gets 150 and played out of his skin.

"There were other opportunities in the game that we could have taken but we didn't.

"The reality is we're doing a lot of good thigs which is promising, but doing a lot of good things and being promising doesn't equate to wins."

Gillespie was full of praise for Carey, who was playing his first competitive match since the start of Australia's successful ODI World Cup campaign in October and has ensured his place in the squad for the NRMA Insurance Test series against Pakistan that is expected to be named in coming days.

Carey pouched eight catches across both Victoria batting efforts - including six in their first innings – in a flawless performance with the gloves, and then seemed set for a first red-ball century since last summer's Boxing Day Test against South Africa until he miscued an attempted lofted drive on 81.

The only prior chance he had offered was when he looked to up the scoring rate upon reaching 50, and a slog sweep off left-arm spinner Doug Warren bounced from the hands of a diving Campbell Kellaway and over the square leg rope for six.

"He played wonderfully well, he assessed the situation and the conditions really well," Gillespie said of the incumbent Test keeper.

"He played to his strengths and it was a very good knock.

"It was great for Alex to spend some time in the middle as part of his preparation for the Test series, and I thought his keeping was elite as well."

But once Carey departed with SA 6-163 chasing 258, and despite another solid contribution from batting all-rounder Liam Scott in his first match of the season, Victoria's seamers led by O'Neill and Siddle (3-57) had the final say.

With 73 needed when Agar and Doggett joined forces shortly after lunch, it was always going to take a miracle to get their team over the line and, despite some entertaining blows landed by the former (46 from 26 balls), Victoria's win was completed thanks to a pinpoint yorker from Mitch Perry.

If the Redbacks were to challenge the target after another horror start to a batting innings, the responsibility had initially weighed heavily upon unbeaten pair Carey and Nathan McSweeney at the start of day four.

McSweeney's 481 Shield runs at 48 prior to today made him the only member of SA's regular top-order to average above 25 this summer, so when he nicked off to become O'Neill's fourth victim in the morning's sixth over, the challenge only became greater.

It seemed insurmountable half an hour later when first innings century maker Jake Fraser-McGurk – having batted with rare circumspection to score six from 25 deliveries – landed an upper-cut in the hands of Kellaway on the deep backward point boundary.

It provided a moment of celebration for Fraser-McGurk's long-time friend and former Victoria teammate Perry who had found himself on the end of some of the South Australian's blazing strokes during the run-a-ball hundred on day two.

Redbacks' hopes were raised when Carey and Scott counter-punched through a 73-run stand for the sixth wicket as the ball lost its hardness and batting became marginally less fraught.

But it was the pair's need to keep accelerating that brought the crucial breakthrough, with Carey's attempt to strike O'Neill down the ground coming undone when the ball seemingly held in the surface and the resultant skied catch was accepted at mid-off.

Three balls later, SA's last recognised batting hope Ben Manenti added his name to the long list of players caught behind the wicket in this game to complete O'Neill's maiden milestone at his new favourite venue.

Sheffield Shield 2023-24 standings

Team	Matches played M	Wins W	Losses L	Drawn D	No results N/R	Deductions Ded.	Batting Bonus Bat	Bowling Bonus Bowl	Total points PTS
1 Western Australia Men WA	10	5	2	3	0	0	5.53	9.4	47.93
2 Tasmanian Tigers Men TAS	10	5	2	3	0	0	6.06	8.3	47.36
3 NSW Men NSW	10	4	3	3	0	0	6.31	9	42.31
4 Victoria Men VIC	10	4	4	2	0	0	4.74	8.2	38.94
5 South Australia Men SA	10	3	6	1	0	0	5.19	9.3	33.49
6 Queensland Bulls QLD	10	2	6	2	0	0	3.54	8.3	25.84

Legend

M: Matches played

W: Wins

L: Losses

D: Drawn

N/R: No results

Ded.: Deductions

Bat: Batting Bonus

Bowl: Bowling Bonus

PTS: Total points