Wright wraps up win for Tasmania

Tasmania 207 and 334 beat South Australia 112 and 216 (Cosgrove 64, Miller 38*, Wright 5-43) by 213 runs
Scorecard

Daniel Marsh, Tasmania's captain, was delighted with his team's unusually lofty mid-season standing after a 213-run win over South Australia at the Adelaide Oval.

The resounding victory lifted Tasmania into second place in the Pura Cup table, behind Victoria, unfamiliar territory at this stage of the year given Tasmania's tradition of poor starts.

"Normally we're just starting our run, we normally don't get too many points before Christmas," Marsh said. "And I guess the beauty is we've got Michael Di Venuto to come back into the team and Shane Watson to start bowling again, hopefully in the not-too-distant future."

Watson, an Australian one-day player who had to withdraw from last year's World Cup squad with a back injury, has since been playing for Tasmania purely as a batsman. But Marsh said Watson had been bowling in the nets and was set to bowl later this month: "We're hoping to have him right to bowl for the next one-dayer."

Tasmania cleaned up the win in the space of a session, taking the final six second -innings SA wickets needed. Chasing an improbable 430 to win in the final innings, SA resumed at 4-110 with little hope of avoiding defeat.

Darren Lehmann (10) popped a simple catch to gully off Damien Wright's bowling on the opening ball of the day. Gerard Denton, the Man of the match, picked up Graham Manou in the following over, then, in the fifth over of the day, Wright dismissed John Davison to leave SA on 7 for 126.

By then a Tasmanian victory was inevitable, although Mick Miller and Mark Cleary delayed it with an entertaining stand of 65 in 99 balls.

They took a particular liking to Shannon Tubb's left-arm spinners, with Miller hitting consecutive sixes off one of his overs, and Cleary belting consecutive fours off his next over.

Andrew Downton then bowled Cleary to snuff out SA's resistance and they were all out for 216 soon after. Denton finished with 3 for 22 and Wright 5 for 43. SA's meagre total today, along with their first innings of 112 - a record low against Tasmania - caused Lehmann to apologise to supporters.

"We apologise for what we've been doing and we can only promise that we'll work harder and play better," he said. On a brighter note, Lehmann said he had pulled up well physically after his first Pura Cup match back from an achilles tendon injury.