Sam Harper hit a first-innings ton for Victoria in their Sheffield Shield game against Western Australia on Monday (February 16).
Opening the batting for Victoria, Harper slammed a scintillating 76-ball hundred. He attacked from the onset, singling out Jhye Richardson, who conceded 28 runs off his first four overs. His knock took Victoria to the 50-run mark in just seven overs, with Harper having scored 40 of those. He reached his half-century off 27 balls.
Campbell Kellaway (44) held one end as his partner went about his run-scoring, but fell on the first ball after lunch, the pair having added 126 runs for the opening wicket. Harper completed his ton off 76 deliveries shortly after, but Victoria lost wickets at regular intervals post lunch following a commanding start.
Off-spinner Corey Rocchiccioli first broke a 43-run stand between Harper and Blake Macdonald by dismissing the latter, before accounting for the centurion’s wicket as well. He scored 119 off 109, his fourth first-class hundred. Victoria, from 169-1, went down to 187-3 and then 215-5, losing four wickets for 46 runs.
Matthew Short and Fergus O'Neill’s 53-run partnership for the sixth wicket brought Victoria back, and they eventually finished the day at 338-7. Captain Will Sutherland finished unbeaten on 31 and is accompanied by Sam Elliott (14).
Match 23, Western Australia vs Victoria
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Victoria are currently leading the Shield table with two rounds of games remaining after the ongoing one, and are hoping to bag the rights to host the final. They will next face Tasmania before finishing the league stage against South Australia.
Harper, meanwhile, has a middling first-class record of 2412 runs in 64 matches at 24.86, with four hundreds and nine fifties. He has had a stellar Big Bash League career, however, where he is one of the 27 batters to have scored over 2000 runs in the tournament’s history.
Across nine BBL seasons from 2016 to 2026, the wicketkeeper-batter has scored 2004 runs in 102 games at a strike-rate of 134.40. Harper also won the 2018/19 BBL title with the Melbourne Renegades and finished the season as their top scorer with 241 runs at a strike rate of 139.75. He was the 2025/26 season's third-highest run getter, scoring 381 runs for Melbourne Stars.
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