Tasmania coach Adam Griffith knows his Tigers sit very much in the “mathematical chance” category when it comes to making the JLT One-Day Cup finals.
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Victoria gaining a bonus point from its abandoned match against New South Wales at North Sydney Oval ensured that not one, but two bonus points would be required against Queensland at Blundstone Arena on Tuesday for an unlikely berth in Thursday’s elimination final.
To do that, they would need to chase down any total in 24.5 overs or restrict the Bulls to half of their score.
But that scenario is the furthest thing from Griffith’s mind.
“When you have these situations it is important you don’t go into the game thinking like that, that you actually go into the game looking to win it first and play the way you normally play,’’ he said on Monday.
“Then when an opportunity arises throughout the day and you can push for certain things.
“I’ve seen it happen too many times that teams go into it and thinking one way, which is different to the way they normally play, and it can go awry pretty quickly.”
Griffith said it would be a pretty simplistic game plan his charges would take into the contest against the Bulls, looking to stick to the formula that delivered bonus points against South Australia and the CA XI.
“If we bat first, we want to get as many as we can, and that has been the game plan all along, especially over the last couple of games when they’ve really brought into the way we want to play with that bat,’’ he said.
“We will just bat accordingly and bat normally and then bowl second and try to restrict as much as we can.
“If we happen to bowl first we want to restrict them to as little as possible, which is the old cliche, and then we’ll approach it with the bat how we see fit.”
Assisting the Tigers in the quest for three successive wins will be Tim Paine, who will return from T20I duty in India.
“Originally we were going to send him to Perth for the second XI game and give him that opportunity over there, but the way we played in Sydney and getting a couple of bonus points in those games, the opportunity arose where we could push for a finals spot,’’ Griffith said.
“We wanted to get Tim back into the group when there was the opportunity to do that and he has been a great servant for us in one-day cricket and he deserves the opportunity to come back in.”
Paine, 32, will bat at the top of the order, but Matthew Wade will keep the wicketkeeping gloves.
No decision had been made on Monday afternoon who would make way for Paine, with opener Ben McDermott the likely candidate.
Tuesday’s match in Hobart starts at 2pm.