Test aspirant Oliver Peake was given a late lifeline as Victoria and South Australia ended a rain-affected day two of the Sheffield Shield final evenly poised.<\/p>\n
After the Vics bowled out SA for 198, Peake (15no) and former Test opener Marcus Harris (26no) steered their side to 4-110 at stumps on Friday at Melbourne’s Junction Oval.<\/p>\n
It came as wet weather interrupted play for a second straight day, with more forecast over the weekend.<\/p>\n
SA must win the final outright to claim back-to-back Shield titles for the first time in their history, having fallen two runs short of batting bonus points.<\/p>\n
If the decider is drawn and first-innings bonus points are also tied, the title is awarded to the top-ranked side \u2014 Victoria.<\/p>\n
Peake was on five when he was dropped at third slip by Henry Hunt off Liam Scott’s bowling, and the SA opener went off for treatment after the ball slipped through his hands and hit his face.<\/p>\n
SA quick Nathan McAndrew (2-37) had given SA a boost with two important wickets, dismissing opener Sam Harper (20) and the experienced Peter Handscomb (eight).<\/p>\n
Jordan Buckingham (1-19) dismissed Dylan Brasher (three) cheaply and Henry Thornton (1-12) removed opener Campbell Kellaway (29).<\/p>\n
Harper hit a six and four off McAndrew with his first two balls faced and had a running battle with Buckingham in a short, but eventful, stay at the crease.<\/p>\n
The Vics’ wicketkeeper reacted to a stare-off with Buckingham by belting his next delivery for a six, which was almost caught on the boundary, but he was caught behind soon afterwards.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Victoria earnt one bonus point for dismissing SA within the first 100 overs.<\/p>\n
Sam Elliott (1-36), picked ahead of Mitch Perry for the final, went some way towards justifying his selection when he snared the prized wicket of Test star Alex Carey (26).<\/p>\n
A wider ball stayed low and Carey dragged an attempted drive on the up back on to his stumps.<\/p>\n
Nathan McSweeney (52) scored a half-century while Ben Manenti (28), who provided a highlight with a powerful six off captain Will Sutherland (4-54), threw his wicket away just before lunch.<\/p>\n
Manenti lost his battle with the Victorian skipper when he holed out to Todd Murphy, who eventually held on to a juggled catch.<\/p>\n
Play started 30 minutes early on Friday and will do so for the remainder of the match after rain took away two full sessions on day one.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Test aspirant Oliver Peake was given a late lifeline as Victoria and South Australia ended a rain-affected day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5844,64,63,8612,740,2649,15200,24299,116221,1124,588,85,660],"class_list":["post-567477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-abc-sport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-commentary","tag-cricket","tag-final","tag-live-score","tag-scorecard","tag-sheffield-shield","tag-south-australia","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-victoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567477","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=567477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}