West Aussie spinner Corey Rocchiccioli has praised Cameron Bancroft’s breakthrough performance, providing insight into the hidden efforts his teammate put in to get back his form.
Bancroft found some form again after a lacklustre start to the season, making scores of 122 and 58 runs against South Australia at the WACA Ground last week.
The 32-year-old was a contender to partner Usman Khawaja at the top of the order in the upcoming Ashes season, but low scores in the first few rounds of the Sheffield Shield put those ambitions on hold.
However, with other openers around the country similarly struggling, Bancroft’s breakthrough century to snap a form slump has slowly begun putting him back on the radar in recent days.
Speaking to SportFM, Rocchiccioli says it was no surprise to see Bancroft get rewarded after putting in a mountain of effort in searching for better results behind the scenes.
“To see the work that he did throughout the week, there was no surprise that he was going to score runs,” he said.
“I’ve never seen someone consume the amount of cricket balls that he’s done over the last couple of weeks to get himself in a position to feel comfortable to score.
“Going back and playing grade cricket as well. It was nice watching a friend and a teammate put the work in and get the immediate success.
“You don’t often get that in sport where you put the work in and then you get the results straight away.
“The amount of work he did, the amount of balls he faced, it was incredible. I was so happy for him that he could score the runs he did.”
Bancroft’s batting performances were instrumental in steering Western Australia to scores of 307 and 195 and putting them into a position to chase their first win of the Sheffield Shield season.
However, this did not eventuate with the final day’s action resulting in a draw between the two sides, as the match was called off early due to bad light.
Rocchiccioli conceded Western Australia had to settle for the draw, but they had every intention of playing for the win, despite wickets falling and light fading.
“They defended the ground really well and as much as it was a higher scoring game at the WACA than it usually might have been previously, it was actually quite hard to start,” he said.
“The ball was still nipping around. Every time you lose a wicket that takes the batter a little bit to sort of reset and go again, as we saw with Greeny and Banger’s partnership, they were the ones who saw it the best.
“It was just probably a little bit too much for us towards the back end, and light spoiled it in the end. We were going for it.
“We definitely had conversations around how we were going to go about it. We got ourselves in a position. We just couldn’t capitalise on it in the end. So we had to take the draw.”
South Australia’s Brendan Doggett’s bowling made life difficult for the West Aussie batsman, putting in a masterful performance to earn him Player of the Match accolades.
The Australian Test hopeful took an impressive 6/48 in the first innings and cleaned up most of WA’s top order, Cameron Green, who was in the spotlight upon return from a side injury.
With Doggett’s name in conversations for a possible Test squad appearance, Roccicchioli says the South Australian says he has the attributes to make it in the Aussie side.
“As a first-class cricketer, he’s quite hard to play against. He’s always there and there about,” he said.
“He’s got a beautiful bumper for the tailenders. He always tends to bring that out when I walk out to bat.
“He just seems to go all day, and I would presume that that would be the type of bowlers they’re looking for when they pick those Australian test teams.”
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