14th March 2007 Grand Final vs Bag of Marbles

The grand final was played on the Wednesday due to the labor day holiday on the Monday.
I had expected Boons to be our opponents as they had been the stronger team all season, but it seems that the Marbles brought in their best side for the finals, some of whom didn't play in our previous encounters.

Our lineup saw one change from the Semi Final with Pax taking Daints place who has now retired from the team for awhile.

We had to bat first with Philbert and Bruce making a great start scoring 19 from the first over including a seven, and scoring 8 from the second over. After that it went down hill with Phil being caught and runout in the 3rd over and they each got bowled in the 4th over. The partnership was 21 with Phil netting 6 from 14 after 3 wickets and facing 2 wides, while Bruce netted 9 from 10 after 1 wicket and faced 1 wide.

Cap'n and Mahstar came in with the thought of getting the score upto around 40. The Jackpot ball was hit for four which was doubled to 8. The next three balls were a hattrick of legside wides. We had 17 from the first over, and were upto 44 in the next over before Mahstar was runout after facing two dot balls. The next over saw a wide and three singles. The next over started with a wide taking the score to 46, but another runout after two more dot balls was negated with a five from Bob. The partership was 25, with Bob scoring 21 from 6 balls, while Mahstar made -6 from 18 after two runouts and faced 5 wides.

The Don and King struggled as they scored mostly in singles. They lost four wickets with The Don caught and runout, and King was bowled twice. The partnership was 1 run with Don netting -3 from 10 and faced 1 wide and 1 noball, while King netted -2 from 14 and faced a noball.

Pax and Thorpe had alot of work to do to give us a competitive total as we had just 47 on the board at the time. They both started extremely well scoring from every ball in the first two overs making 16 and 11 from each. Thorpe hit two 4s in their first over with the rest comming in 2s. They had the score upto 79 in the 15th over before Thorpe was bowled. He was bowled again in the last over but they managed to get the total to 74 runs.

This total is always very difficult to defend and after the first over in the field we knew we would have a hard time trying to get the win.

King opened the bowling and was demolished with two 7s in the over for 21 runs. Bob (11), Mahstar (13) and Philbert (8) quelled the onslaught as they kept the scoring to abour 2 runs a ball. The partnership was 53.

We really needed wickets and alot of them if we were to win this game as they needed just 22 more runs in 12 overs to win. Pax was a star with the ball taking three wickets in the fifth over for -12 runs. But after that they took to us again with Thorpe (14), Mahstar (16) and King (19) coming in for some stick. Mahstar's over was looking reasonable until the final ball was hit for 7. King got hit for 2s, 3s, a four and a five. They had 90 runs after two pairs.

They had no team pressure when their third pair came in as they already led the game. However their run rate slowed as Bruce (11), The Don (8), Philbert (5) and Bob (8) bowled accurately without getting any wickets. The pair made 32 mostly with twos.

Pax bowled the jackpot over to the final pair and conceeded 10 runs, Bruce was hit for a seven and a four as they got 15 from the 14th over. Thorpe conceeded a four and a few singles in a total of 9 runs for the over. The Don became just our second bowler to get wickets in this match with the first ball caught by Mahstar, second ball runout, and the third ball was a brilliant diving catch by Bob in the back half. The score was over 150, but this brought it back under and they finished on 147. So we lost the Grand Final by 73 runs. That's almost doubled our score.

There was one time that Mahstar fielded the ball and the batter was wandering a bit so he threw the stumps down. He was probably out but the umpire didn't give it out, I'm not sure if he got back in the crease in time.

Bob's catch was a highlight of the match and it almost singly got him the three votes for this match.

This has been written after the final MVP awards have been given and this match resulted in The Don taking the MVP by one vote over Daints, with The King on 10, Thorpe on 9 and Mahstar on 8 votes.

Thorpe didn't have the best of nights in the field, as some chances were missed. Usually his fielding is a standout, but he kept up his batting prowess.

The pairs title was taken by Cap'n Bob and Mahstar for the second season in a row.

Onto next season which will start next week for us. Feel free to come along and show your support for us. There has been talk of a second yorkies team which could give some healthy competition if we have to face them.