Phillip Hughes has been challenged to produce a huge Sheffield Shield century to help revive his stop-start Test career and capitalise on South Australia's opening-day dominance of Victoria.
SA were 3-163 at stumps at the MCG on Friday, already holding a 45-run first innings lead after skittling Victoria for 118, the Bushrangers' lowest Shield score against the Redbacks in 50 years.
Opener Hughes, who was in the Test team as recently as the mid-year Ashes series and who already has a double-century to his name this Shield season, was unbeaten on 77.
SA coach Darren Berry said the 24-year-old, who's played 26 Tests, needed to do more than just reach triple-figures to force his way back into national selectors' reckoning.
"The kid's been dropped three times from Australia. I keep saying to him I think Justin Langer got dropped five times and came back and played a hundred Tests," Berry said on Friday night.
"I'll be challenging him tomorrow morning, saying 'How hungry are you?'.
"We won't be satisfied with a small one. We want big."
Hughes' 107-run third-wicket stand with Tom Cooper (54) gave SA the lead after three wickets each to quicks Kane Richardson and Gary Putland gave the visitors the early ascendancy.
While Victorian captain Matthew Wade won the toss, Berry said the visitors would have bowled first anyway on a green-tinged pitch had the coin fallen their way.
But Bushrangers counterpart Greg Shipperd said his batsmen had themselves to blame, not the conditions.
It's the second straight game in which they're facing a big first innings deficit, having also batted poorly to be beaten by an innings by Western Australia in Perth earlier this week.
"(Scoring) 118 on the back of 198 in the first innings in Perth has really asked some serious questions about our defensive skills in particular," Shipperd said, after a long debrief with his batsmen.
"Having said that, we're losing our wickets to a lot of crossbat shots, so we've reviewed all of those areas.
"Hopefully the boys will turn it around certainly in the next innings to keep this game alive."
Share
