Tasmania’s approach to the final day of the Sheffield Shield match against Queensland has drawn the ire of former Australian fast bowler Merv Hughes.
Beginning the day at 1-59 and a lead of 204, Tasmania made no attempt to win the match at Adelaide’s Karen Rolton Oval, instead happy to let the game meander to a meaningless draw.
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Nightwatchman Lawrence Neil-Smith was the main culprit, at one stage he’d faced 61 balls for just one run.
He eventually finished unbeaten on 71, an innings that took nearly four hours on a pitch that wasn’t playing any tricks.
Instead of declaring and setting Queensland a target, Tasmania crawled to 3-196 in 75 overs when the match was eventually called off, the level of interest perhaps reflected in the fact that Usman Khawaja and Joe Burns bowled the final overs of the match.
One of the few bright spots was 23-year-old Tasmanian opener Tim Ward, who made 144 and 81 in just his second first-class match.
Speaking on the cricket.com.au coverage of the final day, Hughes was critical of Tasmania’s tactics on the fourth morning.
“If Neil-Smith at the other end had of contributed, that first hour he only scored a couple of runs, to score from both ends, get the runs quicker, you get a bigger score earlier, and declare before lunch,” he said.
https://twitter.com/MervHughes332/status/1447134325506383875?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
“They’ve taken too much time, they’re now thinking we haven’t got enough time to bowl them out, so why declare?
“Well, teach your guys to play. If Queensland want to chase six an over, and they do that successfully, good on them. You learn from that. But you don’t learn from just batting out time.
“The way the field is set, and the way Tasmania are batting, you would think Tasmania are trying to hang on for the draw.”
Khawaja said after the match that the prospect of trying to get a result had influenced his decision to declare Queensland’s first innings 145 runs behind Tasmania’s total.
“We declared hoping they’d set us a chase, and then try to chase it,” Khawaja said. “It was always going to be hard to get lots of wickets on that [pitch] so it had to be a sporting declaration and get them to set us a total and us try to chase it down.
“That was the only way there was going to be any result. But they obviously didn’t want to play that way.
“They batted for a session too long…they could have pushed the game more on day two expecting them to declare around lunch, that’s when you normally declare. But that was just their game plan. I guess they were happy to get first innings [bonus] points and that’s what it was.”
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