Pitched battle underlines Shield issues facing Test pipeline

Nathan McSweeney knows better than most how difficult the transition from the Sheffield Shield to Test cricket is.

In his maiden international series last summer, McSweeney was exposed to arguably cricket’s greatest challenge: Jasprit Bumrah armed with a new ball in dying light. On Test debut in Perth, the makeshift opener was knocked over in the final session of both days one and three by Bumrah. McSweeney was dropped after three Tests and has not played for Australia since.

Now back among domestic ranks, the South Australia captain was reminded of the immense step up while facing Scott Boland on Saturday evening during a hotly contested Sheffield Shield final at the Junction Oval.  

“As a batter, it’s pretty good practice facing Scotty Boland on a wicket that was offering a little bit,” said McSweeney, who made 52 and 20 in SA’s historic victory.

“Just speaking to a few of the boys before, him bowling late … felt very like I was playing Test cricket. It felt (like) tough work – didn’t know where the next run was coming from. So that definitely sets up the batters for hopefully a smooth transition into Test cricket.”

McSweeney’s glass half-full answer to a question about whether the Sheffield Shield is doing its job in preparing players to become Test cricketers delves into a key element of the equation: pitches.

The competition’s showpiece match, on a St Kilda surface that offered seam movement through all five days, was representative of many regular-season matches this summer. Victoria inserted their opponents, both teams lost wickets to seam early in every innings, while runs were difficult to score until the ball softened around the 30- to 50-over mark.

Ultimately, South Australia won because they capitalised on that period in their second innings better than their opponents, thanks chiefly to one of the Test side’s most in-form batters recently, Alex Carey, scoring a clutch hundred.

Victoria, whose batting frailties have been papered over by their brilliant bowlers this season, in contrast crumbled in their reply after seasoned batters Peter Handscomb and Marcus Harris were dismissed in consecutive overs late on day four.

“If you were batting between 50 to 80 overs, there was definitely some runs there for you to get – and we saw that with ‘Kez’ (Carey) making a hundred,” said McSweeney.

Only one top-four batter passed 35 for the match (McSweeney in his first-innings half-century), spin did not take a wicket until the final session of day three and fast bowlers bowled more 90 per cent of the total overs.

There would have been even fewer spin overs sent down – all up, the slow men delivered just 27 out of 299 overs for the match – had McSweeney had not been forced into bowling himself and Ben Manenti due to bad light late on the second day.

“From my point of view, I think if we’re going to build all-round players to play all over the world, we probably need to look a little bit at how the game is going,” Victoria coach and ex-Test opener Chris Rogers said.

“Just so it’s not the same way all the time, and we have spin playing a more important role. Spin didn’t bowl a significant amount of overs in this game, so that’s something I think that needs to be addressed at some stage.”

There is a fear that the abundance of green surfaces is harming the chances of both batters and bowlers becoming resilient international players.

That view goes that batters, already facing the difficult task of preparing starkly different techniques for white and red-ball cricket, no longer have the defences to handle the challenges of the Kookaburra’s more prominent seam, while pace bowlers who succeed at Shield level lack the velocity to trouble better players on flatter wickets.

“There’s no doubt it’s tough early,” said South Australia coach Ryan Harris, the former Test quick. “It seems to be that you get to the 30-over mark and the ball goes flat. Is that too long?

“I’m pretty critical of batters, being a bowler, I still analyse like I play – and I’d love to bowl to a few of these batters that play (now) … you’ve still got to have a good defence and be able to get through tough periods and once you do that you earn the right to bat long.

“I feel as though the batting is not as strong as it used to be. There’s no doubt about that. But the bowling is also pretty good as well.”

Some of the issues were thought to be solving themselves after the 2024-25 Shield season saw an uptick in runs, centuries and overs bowled by spinners after curators were gently asked to dial back the spiciness of pitches from the ’23-24 summer.

While spinners have taken around one in five wickets in 2025-26, the average runs per wicket in the Shield has now dropped back to its third-lowest mark over the past decade. Statistician Ric Finlay has pointed out that Peter Handscomb’s haul of 688 runs was the lowest tally to top the Shield run-scoring charts in 53 years.

“It’s probably a good challenge for the batters – if you can succeed at Shield cricket, then you’re probably pretty equipped to perform at the next level,” said Victoria skipper Will Sutherland.

“In saying that, I think for the bowlers, it can give a little bit of a false idea of who’s bowling well, just because (pitches) are doing more and they’re probably under a little bit less pressure.

“Whereas when the wickets are a bit flatter, you’re definitely finding out who the best bowlers are.

“The Australian team seems to keep going pretty well. I’m sure it’ll keep getting discussed. But I think most of us, from a player’s point of view, are reasonably happy with where it’s at at the moment – except maybe Toddy (Murphy, Victoria’s off-spinner) who’d like to see a few more spinning wickets.”

Sutherland indicated that Victoria would look to produce more spin-friendly Junction Oval tracks next season like the one they hosted South Australia on in the round 10 match earlier this month.

One of the questions for Cricket Australia will be whether to tinker with its Shield bonus-point system, which has been in place since 2014-15, to promote a more balanced style of play.

Teams currently receive one point for bowling their opponents out inside the first 100 overs of the first innings, and 0.01 points for every run scored above 200 in the same time span.

There is a view that states now see the bowling points as more achievable to attain than the batting points; producing seam-friendly wickets guarantees they will not fall behind the pack, even if those pitches also give their opponents bowling points in any given match.

Greener pitches also see games finish more often inside three days, meaning their leading bowlers are logging lighter workloads and are less likely to need to sit out matches in an ever more crammed calendar.

Having said that, only one frontline pace bowler (Western Australia’s Cameron Gannon) played every match for their state this season.

“In 2024-25, we saw a really positive uptick in runs and hundreds and spin overs,” Cricket Australia’s operations and scheduling boss Peter Roach said earlier this month. “We thought we were in a really positive space.

“Without chatting extensively to curators about this (season), I think the view will be that we didn’t do much different this year, but we’ve had a decline back to where we were in all those categories … of runs, hundreds, batting averages and spin overs.

“The things we can control are pitches, the ball and the playing conditions, and we assess those.

“Then the high-performance (arms of the) teams … I’m sure they’re asking those same questions: how do we get players making 800, 900 runs rather than 500, 600 (per season)?”

Sheffield Shield final 2025-26

March 26-30: South Australia won by 56 runs