The 2025-26 Sheffield Shield season gets underway tomorrow, Saturday 4 October, with an intriguing opener between Western Australia and New South Wales at the WACA Ground.<\/p>\n
NSW come into the clash unbeaten in its last four matches against WA, including three wins.<\/p>\n
For WA, there\u2019s a chance to respond after a rare home defeat to Victoria in March in the last Shield game of the 2024-25 season. They haven\u2019t lost two straight Shield games at the WACA Ground since 2021.<\/p>\n
Elegant left-hander Kurtis Patterson will again be a key figure for NSW, having been among his team’s most consistent performers last season with 743 runs at 57.15 including a century and five half-centuries.<\/p>\n
Australian allrounder Cameron Green will play his first Shield match since February 2024, when he scored an unbeaten 103 against Tasmania in Hobart.<\/p>\n
Green said he was thrilled to be playing for his state again, having missed last season due to back surgery.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be back around the guys, a fresh season, some new faces I haven\u2019t played with before, it\u2019s really exciting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m feeling really good and my body is in a really good place.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a really good rehab journey.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel stronger, fitter and my action feels good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laurie Sawle medallist for the 2024-25 season Corey Rocchiccioli will also be in action after his recent tour for Australia A in India. Rocchiccioli took 38 wickets last season, second only to South Australia\u2019s Nathan McAndrew, who notched up 40 dismissals.<\/p>\n
Rocchiccioli said he was looking forward to being back playing at the WACA Ground, following his stint in India.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo come back home and have that summer optimism in the air, first game of the year, playing in front of friends and family and playing with my mates again, I don\u2019t think you can beat playing at the WACA Ground,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes you like your long pre-seasons, but I think with the stage where I\u2019m at, to be able to play six first-class games over the winter break, I feel like I\u2019m in a really good place to play cricket.\u201d<\/p>\n
With plenty of experience on both teams and strong individual match-ups across the board, this opening-round fixture sets up as a tight and competitive contest – the perfect way to start a new Sheffield Shield Season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2025-26 Sheffield Shield season gets underway tomorrow, Saturday 4 October, with an intriguing opener between Western Australia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85,83],"class_list":["post-187040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}