Evergreen Henrique’s rights blues after a shaky start

After a shaky start to Marsh Sheffield Shield’s defense, it was the evergreen Moises Henriques and Adelaide expert Daniel Solway who got New South Wales back on track and ultimately rose against a disciplined attack in Western Australia.

The Blues may have had a delayed start to the 2020-21 season after their scheduled first-round encounter against Victoria was postponed, but ended the first day of their campaign in ominously similar shape to last summer when they turned 47. Shield title.

Henriques, who was his team’s second-highest Shield Runs scorer last season, finished his 11th Shield 100 in the final hour when he swept spinner Ashton Agar to the fine leg and missed day 134.

He had scored 13 goals while being assisted in the middle by 25-year-old Solway, 68, whose only Shield century played South Australia at the nearby Adelaide Oval a year ago just before lunchtime on a defiant, unbeaten fourth wicket stand from 191.

That union saw NSW finish the day at 3:262 after three wickets at the opening session initially confirmed WA skipper Shaun Marsh’s decision to bowl.

The playing field at Gladys Elphick Park may have changed significantly since the days blues and Australian weirdo Nathan Lyon was in charge of prep, but it was meant to be largely similar to the deck where Queensland defeated Tasmania by innings a week earlier would have.

That result was achieved by Michael Neser’s sailor on day one in Queensland, which earned him five wickets, and when the blues slipped to 3-71 just before lunch today, Marsh’s trick of maximizing the new ball on a fresh field seemed to be working function.

But as was the case last week, after the track was flattened, it proved difficult to remove any set batters and so the NSW pair survived a few screams for lbw, with the ball rarely threatening much above the stump height but otherwise was careful straightforward.

The clearest indication of the nature of the pitch came during the last session, when WA opening player Matthew Kelly operated on a ball that had carried nearly 70 overs, with keeper Josh Inglis facing the stumps.

“We knew the wicket would be good for the duration of this game,” said WA batsman Ashton Turner at the end of the day.

“We probably thought it would do a little bit more than the first and second sessions, but that can happen sometimes.

“It’s a floor that we don’t know and that we haven’t played much here. So if we had time we might have made a different decision.”

“But other than that, it doesn’t look like it’s going to get too bad, it’s still in very good shape and there’s a lot of hard work out there for us.”

WA’s best chance at removing Henriques after he settled down was the chance he had when he was 85 and stole a risky single to the middle, but even if the litter had hit the stumps the 33rd -year-old desperate diver said he made his bottom well.

The only damage that was done was Henriques’ pad strap, which blew up in the little drama, but he made quick progress and went back to his hundred just before the second new ball.

The former test all-rounder was solid in defense, covering possible sailors’ movements from the thatched grass cover of the pitch. He punished anything that was short and was most imposing when dragging or cutting on the calm surface.

The mighty right-hander was recognized as an amazing talent back in school and made his Shield debut as a teenager in 2006. The measure of its persistence, however, is shown in a stroke number of at least one shield ton in eight of his last nine summers with NSW.

During this time he has increasingly developed into a batting specialist, mainly due to the enormous depth of bowling that the Blues currently offer. However, in three of his team’s nine Shield games last summer, he’s still made valuable overs and could prove to be difficult as that pitch wears out.

He received huge support today from Solway, who has been a successful goalscorer in Sydney’s premier cricket competition for the past few years but only managed to crack top-notch cricket last year due to the caliber of batters in NSW when internationals are available.

He finished his first Shield summer with 498 runs – a record that Henriques (512) and opener Daniel Hughes (665) had surpassed for the champions – with an average of 55.33 and played an inconspicuous, but invaluable second fiddle.

The blues had started airily, scoring nearly three runs per over against a four-pointed seam attack that saw left winger Liam Guthrie and 21-year-old all-rounder Aaron Hardie replacing Joel Paris and rookie Lance Morris in last week’s win over SA.

Paris has been ruled out with a thigh strain while 22-year-old Morris reported pain in his team after making his debut against SA at Karen Rolton Oval last week and is awaiting a diagnosis of the nature of the injury.

It was Guthrie who dealt WA the first blow in the 20th when he seduced Nick Larkin into a hookshot that hovered fine-legged in Kelly’s hands.

Guthrie received a similar gift three overs later when ex-Test batsman Kurtis Patterson sluggishly shot a short ball delivered around the wicket by WA recruit Cameron Gannon at the only fielder in the depths on the side of the leg.

The wasteful number of layoffs continued soon after, as Hughes drove breezy with a wide delivery from Hardie, who also operated left-handed around the wicket, and Ashton Turner clutched a neat catch on the second slip that fell deep to the left.

It had been the overly adventurous nature of NSW’s batting, and not the demons of the first day on the field, that had allowed WA to earn honors in the opening session, but the look of the game changed in each of the verses that followed.

The afternoon session was an arm wrestling as the WA bowlers – particularly Agar, who posted 12 overs for 15 runs – strangled the scoring, with the NSW pair adding 68 overs out of 32, with Henriques adding 46 of those.

Then, as the sun set and the bowlers’ energy levels followed a similar path, the Blues took control, scoring 121 of 36 overs. With the duo putting the ship back in order today and only able to resume a few mornings, there were few issues with the new ball.

“Most of the time you have a chance late in the day with a lazy shot but today I thought the guys who weren’t outside played really well and we didn’t have any chances,” said Turner.

“I think our bowlers did a pretty good job of keeping them under 300 without going through many wickets.”

NSW Blues: Daniel Hughes, Nick Larkin, Kurtis Patterson, Moises Henriques, Daniel Solway, Jason Sangha, Peter Nevill (c, wk), Sean Abbott, Trent Copeland, Nathan Lyon, Harry Conway

Western Australia: Cameron Bancroft, Sam Whiteman, Shaun Marsh (c), Cameron Green, Ashton Turner, Ashton Agar, Josh Inglis (wk), Aaron Hardie, Matthew Kelly, Cameron Gannon and Liam Guthrie.