The Sheffield Shield final starts tomorrow, with hosts Tasmania looking to end a great season with a trophy after two near misses. In the Ryobi one-day competition they went down to dominant Victoria in the final, and missed out on the 20/20 final (won by SA) despite finishing second on the points table (NSW won the prelim). However, with the huge advantage of hosting the Shield final, Tasmania will be looking to repeat their success of '06/'07 when they downed the Blues by 421 runs for their first title.
Ahead of the final, the various domestic cricket gongs were handed out. The Shield player of the year went to a deserving recipient who, in a year where runs were scarce for Aussie batsmen, made 587 runs at 58.7 from only 7 matches. In addition, he took 27 wickets at 20.11, and captains his state. Despite those impressive achievements, he hasn't, and is unlikely to, ever play a test for Australia. It's tough being in the queue behind Australia's foremost current test player, Shane Watson, so James Hopes can only watch and wonder why he never took up spin bowling. He wouldn't even need to be particularly good...although being 10 years younger would probably help more. However, at 32, it's not late to do a Colin 'Funky' Miller...dye his hair blue, bowl a bit of pace, a bit of spin. After all, Miller didn't play until he was 34 and still played 18 tests.
The recipients of the one day player and 20/20 player of the year awards seem to be sililarly invisible to selectors. Brad Hodge won the one-day player of the year, hitting 560 runs at 62.22 with a strike rate above 93, yet was never in the running for the World Cup. Daniel Harris topped the 20/20 run list with 304 at 60.8 with a strike rate approaching 140, but is probably not being mentioned outside of his home state of South Australia.
Returning to the Sheffield Shield, the batting tables made depressing reading, with Rob Quiney from Victoria heading the way with 724 runs (at 42.58). Only Andrew McDonald (Victoria and another forgotten Australian middleorder all-rounder) made more than two centuries. Of the thirteen batsmen that made more than 500 runs, only four averaged better than 50, only one better than 60 (Khawaja), and eight were less than 40. What happened to players topping 1000 runs and averaging 80+? As Ponting said the other day, "When I started, if you weren't averaging 60 … don't even bother, go and find another game to play because you were never going to play for Australia."
Of course, Ponting's first class contribution didn't bear too much scrutinty this summer either - 184 runs at 16.72.
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