Sheffield Shield 2019-20 | Getting hit in head off good length balls was strange and risky, expresses Adam Voges
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Former Australian cricketer Adam Voges, says MCG pitch was strange getting hit in the head off good length balls they knew that wasn't right. The state did claim silverware, winning the Marsh One-Day Cup, but also tasted lows by going winless in the second half of the Marsh Sheffield Shield season.
Adam Voges, in his second year as the state's head coach, recaps an eventful summer for the state. Voges expressed the strangest incident in the Sheffield Shield season has to be the bounce at MCG. It was a match between Victoria and Western Australia, with the play being abandoned in a dramatic Sheffield Shield clash at the MCG because of dangerous pitch conditions.
Western Australian batsmen Shaun Marsh, Cameron Green and Marcus Stoinis were all hit by deliveries from Victoria’s quicks, which rose sharply and unexpectedly on a lively day-one deck from a good length. Voges said he had never been a part of an abandoned game before.
"I can't say I've ever been in an abandoned game before. That match at the MCG (called off on the first morning because of an unsafe pitch) certainly has to be the strangest moment of our season, just to see the amount of balls jumping off a length from the divots that got created earlier in the game,” he said, reported Cricket.com.au
Match officials called a halt to play 45 minutes into the second session when a fierce Andrew Fekete delivery fired into Stoinis’ ribs. WA were 3-89 when play was stopped, with Peter Siddle (3-21) doing most of the damage. The situation presented a real concern for MCG management with less than three weeks left for the Boxing Day Test. Cricket Australia's head of cricket operations, Peter Roach said the pitch being used in the Shield match was not the one being prepared for the Australia-New Zealand Test.
"Common sense prevailed in the end but it certainly was an interesting time. You can tolerate a certain level if the odd one jumps up and hits a batter on the glove, you take that, that's just part of the game, but when it's happening four or five times an over and guys are getting hit in the head off good length balls, repeatedly getting hit and the near misses as well, we knew that wasn't right," he concluded.
