With youth and ample experience, Western Australia look determined to end Sheffield Shield drought
Western Australia are giving themselves a great chance to win their first Sheffield Shield title in more than two decades and Marsh Cup after finishing as runners up in the last season with the availability of their superstar players at the start of the Sheffield Shield and the Marsh ODI cup. While Marsh and Agar will play only the Marsh Cup opener, Inglis is all set to play the first game of the Shield against South Australia. After his departure to UAE for the T20 World Cup, Josh Phillipe will take over the wicketkeeping duty for the first time after 18 months. However, they will miss the firepower of Marcus Stoinis, who is there in the UAE to play in the Indian Premier League. They will also be blessed with the all-around ability of Cameron Green, who rose to prominence with a fairly good performance against India the last summer. "Cameron Green has had a bit of a stop-start pre-season, he copped two weeks home quarantine post the CA camp in Brisbane, he also got sick and spent a week and a half at home. But around those things, he's trained really strongly, scored a hundred in a practice game and has done some really good work with his bowling. I imagine that we'll still have some guidelines around what he does with the ball,” Western Australia coach Adam Voges said of the all-rounder. “As an allrounder, you don't expect them to have the same workload as your out-and-out bowlers anyway. But I think what we'll see is some more flexibility and potentially higher numbers in what Cam can do in-game.” Western Australia will stack their batting lineup with Cameron Bancroft and Sam Whiteman as openers with an experienced Shaun Marsh to follow at the number three slot. The trio of Hilton Cartwright, Ashton Turner, D'Arcy Short will compete for slots in the middle order and give Western Australia a great chance with the bat. Jhye Richardson, who pulled out of the IPL will be available to play his first Shield game since November 2019 and he will spearhead the bowling attack that may comprise Joel Paris, Cameron Gannon, Matt Kelly, Liam Guthrie and Lance Morris. Western Australia Squad Ashton Agar, Cameron Bancroft, Jason Behrendorff, Hilton Cartwright, Cooper Connolly, Sam Fanning, Cameron Gannon, Jayden Goodwin, Cameron Green, Liam Guthrie, Aaron Hardie, Josh Inglis, Bryce Jackson, Matthew Kelly, Mitch Marsh, Shaun Marsh, David Moody, Lance Morris, Joel Paris, Josh Philippe, Jhye Richardson, Corey Rocchiccioli, D'Arcy Short, Marcus Stoinis, Ashton Turner, Sam Whiteman.