Swans face run chase

By Paul Pickering
CASEY-South Melbourne let a star-studded Richmond outfit off the hook on Saturday and will require its second-biggest score of the season this weekend to consolidate its spot in the top eight.
The Swans dismissed Bushrangers Cameron White, Aiden Blizzard and Ryan Carters cheaply and reduced the Tigers to 8/149, but the visitors cut loose in the last session to post a handsome total of 260.
Richmond all-rounder Sam Taylor (86) and tail-ender Aaron Fekete (51 not out) did most of the damage in a 78-run ninth-wicket stand – the latter smashing 22 runs from one Jayde Herrick over.
The home side also paid a hefty price for dropping Will Sheridan (56) at second slip when he was on 16.
Coach Mark Ridgway was disappointed that a late lapse from the Swans could undo much of the good work from pacemen Damien Wright (4/47) and Matthew Hawking (3/28).
“We had them at 8/140-odd at tea, so you would’ve expected us to knock them over for 160-170 after that, but we didn’t bowl that smartly for the last couple (of wickets),” Ridgway reflected.
The Swans lost openers Rohan Blandford and Robbie Elston – the latter in a highly dubious lbw decision – before stumps and will resume at 2/29.
And Ridgway is still “pretty confident”.
“260 was too many, but the wicket is absolutely flat, so if you’d said at the start of the day that we’d bowl them out for 260 – with the team they had on the park – we would have taken it,” he explained.
Ridgway said his team would draw confidence from its successful chase of 344 against Melbourne in December, when skipper Wright and young gun Jake Best scored twin tons snatch an unlikely victory.
“We’ve chased bigger scores this year, so there’s no reason why we can’t make another 230 runs and get the points,” he said.
“And we certainly need them, because there’s a couple of teams just below us who’ve already won (on first innings) and we can drop from third to eight pretty quickly.”
The Swans were hoping to include gun wicketkeeper-batsman Matthew Wade in the side for Saturday’s chase, but he will now be wearing Bushrangers colours in the Twenty20 Big Bash final in Adelaide that night.
His absence will put more pressure on Wright, not that it’s likely to worry the dominant veteran, whose six Premier appearances this summer have reaped 221 runs (at an average of 73.7) and 14 wickets (at 10.3).
His wicket will be the prize for the Tigers at Casey Fields on Saturday.