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Western Australia have rammed home their advantage against Victoria in the Sheffield Shield, leaving the Bushrangers needing a minor miracle on the final day.
Sam Whiteman has scored his seventh first-class century to put Western Australia in the box seat in their Sheffield Shield clash with Victoria at the WACA Ground.
Whiteman scored 104 off 162 balls on Saturday before WA declared at 5-269 in their second innings.
It left Victoria with a mammoth 454-run victory target, and the visitors looked wobbly at 1-3 when Travis Dean was bowled by Matthew Kelly for three.
Marcus Harris (18no off 47 balls) and Peter Handscomb (22no off 36 balls) guided Victoria to 1-43 at stumps on day three, but the Bushrangers will need to pull off the third-highest run chase in Shield history if they are to secure the win they so desperately need.
Queensland (30.8 points) and NSW (29 points) are favoured to make the final, with both WA (19.7 points) and Victoria (18.6 points) needing to secure two outright wins to have a chance of sneaking through.
"It was a good day for us," Whiteman said.
"Taking three early wickets, and it's always a nervous time as a batting group when you've got a good lead. I thought Bangers and I put on a good partnership, and then it allowed us to put the foot down later in the day and declare and have a lead. And that was a pretty crucial wicket near the end there.
Whiteman peeled off nine boundaries during his knock, with first-innings centurion Cameron Bancroft (68 off 117 balls), Shaun Marsh (34 off 48 balls), and Cameron Green (35 off 37 balls) also producing handy contributions.
Earlier, WA had set up a big lead when they had the Bushrangers all out for 207.
Resuming at 7-186, any thoughts of replicating WA's lower-order revival were quickly put to bed as the Victorians added only three runs before Scott Boland (20) was caught at point off the bowling of Matthew Kelly (4-43).
Will Sutherland (25) and Mitchell Perry (8) followed shortly thereafter, leaving the visitors 184 runs behind on first innings.
Lance Morris took 3-41.
