Youthful Redbacks seek to end 20-year drought

Twenty years since their last victory, South Australia are hopeful their fearless young team's rapid progress will continue in the Sheffield Shield final, against a Victorian side wanting nothing more than to take the match all the way to a nerve-shredding fifth day.

In a climate of doubt about the future of the showpiece match, there is an eagerness on both sides to play out a contest befitting the occasion. South Australia's season ledger of five wins and as many defeats does not suggest they are well equipped to scrap to a draw. Likewise, Victoria's recent batting travails make a draw an unlikely prospect. This may be a Shield to be won, not salvaged.

The extra 90 overs will scarcely be needed if the pitch at Glenelg Oval is anything like the lively strip on which the Redbacks rumbled Tasmania last week to vault to the top of the table. However, South Australia's high performance overseer Tim Nielsen said he would actually prefer a less seamer-friendly surface, with his eyes on the team's progress well beyond the next week.

"I hope it's got a little bit less grass on it - we don't want to see anyone bowled out for 90 on the first morning of a Shield final," Nielsen said of Glenelg Oval, where the final must be played due to the shunting of cricket from Adelaide Oval for the AFL season. "The challenge is trying to produce a wicket on a ground that doesn't have regular first-class cricket, so it doesn't have the consolidated rolling throughout the season or the square used for four-day cricket on a regular basis.

"We've had two or three Futures Leagues games there, but this is a five-day game with a bigger focus. I'm hopeful it'll just be a good-quality cricket wicket that will bounce and carry a little bit and give us the best chance to play the way we do - support our bowlers but also allow our batters to play their shots."

Victoria coach David Saker expects a fair wicket, noting how the likes of Travis Head and Jake Lehmann have prospered when given the right conditions to put pressure on bowlers. He is eager to push the game all the way to the end, reasoning that the Bushrangers' more seasoned XI and spin bowlers Fawad Ahmed and Jon Holland can come into their own.

"I don't think it'll be as flat as some of the wickets produced [for finals] in the last few years, it'll be a good wicket," Saker said. "But I don't think they'll green it up too much because it's a bit too risky on the toss then. They'll try to produce a good cricket wicket, their batters are in good form so we'll wait and see. We've got two good spinners so, if it is a good wicket, we think we can win the game at the back end if we bat well enough.

"Sometimes that feeling of just giving it a go like the South Australians will is a better place to play in, knowing what the trophy is and what it's like to win it, the hunger they'll have will be unbelievable you'd think. But our guys know what it takes and five days of cricket doesn't sound a lot more because it's only one day, but it is a lot more cricket. In 90 overs a lot can happen on that last day, so we're going to fight our butts off and hopefully it comes down to that."

It seems no coincidence that South Australia are contesting their first final since 1996 in the same season when they also made the limited-overs playoff in Sydney at the start of the summer. Under Nielsen and the coach Jamie Siddons - wicketkeeper and captain in that last victory - a concerted effort has been made to focus on homegrown talent and bolster it with a more hardened attitude to fitness and skill than had become customary in the state's cricket.

The acquisition of the former AFL fitness coach Stephen Schwerdt was much publicised in Adelaide, but Nielsen explained that a challenging pre-season was part of a wider plan. For one thing, the notion of plucking imported players from interstate in search of instant results was shelved. Paradoxically but tellingly, success has arrived faster than expected.

"Stephen Schwerdt was a good focus point for us but it was more about changing the culture in the place and understanding exactly what hard work was and how professional athletes went about their business," Nielsen said. "They've improved a huge amount with their skills as well. They are batting, bowling and fielding better than they were at the start of the year and fitness was just one aspect of that. We set that up with a really strong, hard pre-season, and now they're still going strong. Our bowlers have gone from strength to strength - Chadd Sayers, Joe Mennie and Daniel Worrall have been strong the whole way through and that is a benefit of being fitter and stronger.

"We hadn't had any real success on a consistent basis for a long period of time and we were probably at different stages through that period guilty of recruiting people who we thought would be a quick fix for us. At the start of last year, we really put up the fences, we didn't let any of our good young players go and we certainly didn't go looking for the quick fix. We backed our players and Jamie is an excellent developer of young cricketers and young men, so that was a good time for him to come into the system.

"It was time to set something up for ourselves, for the future. They have done that, had a bit of luck, learned from those things, and the staff have been excellent having the big picture at the forefront of their minds. It's not just about winning today, but setting something up that will hold some water for the next five years and have a consistent era where we are competitive."

Like Siddons, who moved from New Zealand, Saker arrived from England last year with a mandate for regeneration. Though the likes of Rob Quiney, Matthew Wade, Clint McKay and Cameron White have been around the block plenty of times, Saker sought, and has achieved, a sizeable renewal of the state's batting stocks in particular.

"We were in need of finding some younger batters in our group and the one thing I said straightaway was we'd make sure we get a couple of games into some young batters and thankfully Travis Dean's been outstanding for us at the top," he said. "His start to the season was amazing. So he's got a game that I think can move on to the next level, he's a really compact opening batter. We got some games into Aaron Ayre who I think is a really good young left-hand batter and Sam Harper kept wicket a couple of games, performed really well for us with the gloves and showed some little signs with the bat.

"That's exciting and with the ball we've given games to a few players. Chris Tremain has been outstanding this year coming into the state as sort of a back up bowler but now he's one of our frontliners and he must be putting his name forward for Australian selection. We needed to freshen it up a little bit, but it's good to have those more experienced players around the group as well to help you out. If you need to call on them, which we did with Cameron, they so often stand up. We've got a good mix at the moment."

South Australia's colts have gathered momentum closer to the season finish line, while the Bushrangers rather stumbled into the final. But they did so through the determination of White's outstanding rearguard against New South Wales in Alice Springs, a performance that Saker hopes has not only lifted the mood of what had been a fading outfit, but also shown the way forward this week.

"We didn't celebrate like we won the game but it was a very happy bunch of guys at the end of the day," Saker said. "Cameron was exhausted but very pleased with what he'd done, and good for him because he's struggled a bit this year at times, being out of the team. All along I've said he'd have a big part to play late in the season and he's done exactly what we hoped he would do.

"It was an excellent innings, unbelievably skilful to be able to handle the spin, the reverse swing, batting a bit out of his crease to make sure lbw was out of play and he just played extremely well. A quote from Graham Gooch is that it was 'great batsmanship' and it was great to watch, really determined stuff. Going into that last day as a coaching staff we didn't really expect to do what we did, but it was great to see and a great shot in the arm for us going into a final after seeing a performance like that."

White knows what it is like to win, and to lose; the Redbacks are presently unaware of either. Whether Head's young team are able to keep charging ahead without being dragged down by the weight of 20 underachieving years is the question about to be answered.