New South Wales drop skipper Kurtis Patterson for final Shield game

New South Wales (NSW) captain Kurtis Patterson has been dropped for the final Sheffield Shield 2022-23 campaign against South Australia. Patterson, who started the season off with 72*, 3 , 40, 25 and 122*, has managed just 155 runs in his last 11 innings in his last 11 years - eight of those scores being single-digit.

NSW Sheffield Shield's most successful team with 47 titles, are yet to win a game this season. If they draw or lose their final game of the season against South Australia it will mark just the second such instance in their illustrious 167-year history. The last time they ended a season winless was in 1938-39.

With Sean Abbott away in India for the One-Day Internationals (ODI), Trent Copeland now retired, and Daniel Hughes nursing a calf injury, Moises Henriques will lead NSW in their final fixtures.

NSW started the season off with Patterson, who made his Test bow for Australia in 2019, as their skipper and Phil Jaques as their head coach and now end it with neither of them in charge. Jaques stepped down from the post in November last year following NSW's poor start to the season.

"Our batting group have been inconsistent recently in delivering the runs necessary to establish the match positions we were looking for," interim coach Greg Shipperd said.

"We recognise it is a difficult decision to pass on your captain but we are confident Kurtis will regather and draw purpose from this call into the future. It was decided to support consistent and in-form batters in this season's last fixture, with the currency being runs."

Jason Sangha, Ryan Hackney, Ryan Hadley and Ben Dwarshuis have made the the squad while Blake MacDonald, who was the 12th man in NSW's 10-wicket loss to Victoria last week could potentially make his his Shield debut at the Karen Rolton Oval, starting March 14.

Patterson, 29, has played 94 first-class games, and has scored 5,594 runs at 37.04, which includes 11 tons and 31 fifties since making his debut in 2011. In the ongoing season though, the southpaw has managed just 417 runs at 29.78 in 16 innings, going past fifty just thrice.