It’s getting harder and harder to stand out from the crowd at Sheffield Shield unless you are Will Pucovski. Hundreds of flowing and breaking bowlers are the only concern for state and national selectors.
Pucovski wasn’t out again at the end of day three of Victoria’s clash with Western Australia, as if trying to rub salt into the very raw wounds of reigning test opener Joe Burns, who failed again for Queensland.
Victoria survived 24 overs late in the day with opening partner Marcus Harris and again defied a new ball on a slightly worn wicket. She was 0-61 and Pucovski, not at 32, showed no sign that his appetite for runs was diminishing.
Pucovski, who was on the field except for 11 overs in Victoria’s two games, saw 799 balls and was out only once.
The 22-year-old batting dynamo has given test voters an opportunity to work their way out of the corner they have retired to by saying they like the stability of the national team’s number 1.
Even Harris, who has a double hundred and a half century in his three bats, has made it nearly impossible for Australian coach Justin Langer and fellow constituents Trevor Hohns and George Bailey to rightly select Burns.
But while Pucovski was standing tall thanks to the size of his running score, the blow against almost all shield bowlers continued unabated.
After captain Shaun Marsh hit a third, WA’s Josh Inglis scored his second 100 of the Shield season to get 29 out of all teams.
Inglis, who looted 125 of just 122 balls before he was WA’s last man, is the seventh player to score several hundred goals in just four rounds of competition.
The Western Australians were eventually sacked for 479, a lead of 65 runs with 94 runs added for the last two wickets. Victorian weirdo Jon Holland did best for his team, taking 4-113 out of 42.1 overs.
But only the Victorian fighters were really rewarded for a tough two weeks in quarantine in Adelaide before their opening game, a quarantine period so tough that one game was scrapped.
“It was five or six weeks to play two games,” said Pucovski after his second attempt.
After a draw in the first game, only a bold statement from Victoria on the final day could prevent the same result.
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