Two measly runs stood between Werribee and consecutive Victorian Sub-District Cricket Association first XI grand final appearances.
The Tigers were upset by Noble Park by two runs in a thrilling, but heartbreaking, semi-final for the natives at Chirnside Park on Sunday.
The match came down to a tension-filled last over, the Tigers requiring nine runs to tie and advance, and Noble Park needing to take two wickets.
Tiger allrounder Heath Pritchard, playing his 200th match, was seeing the ball well on his way to 38.
The milestone man put his side in a position to win the game, even hitting the first ball of the final over for four to lift spirits in the Tigers camp.
Then, with five runs required and two wickets in hand, the unthinkable happened: Pritchard played and missed to spinner Mevan Fernando, wandered out of his crease and saw the bails whipped off by wicketkeeper Dirk Peter Vandergert.
The Tigers had some hope remaining, with tailenders Jonathan Burton and Matthew Thomson coming together. Both had spent little time at the crease this summer, so it was not the ideal situation.
They hit three runs off three balls, two to Burton and one to Thomson, ensuring the match and the season would boil down to the last ball of the day.
Burton faced spinner Fernando, failing to get bat on ball and suffering the same fate as Pritchard – out, stumped.
It was a distressing scene that will stick in the memory of every Tiger player and supporter over winter.
“Emotions were running really high,” Werribee captain Shaun Dean said the morning after the game. “It’s still pretty raw.
It will take me a while to get over this one.”
Should we have seen this coming?
The Tigers have not been in premiership form over the past month.
They won their first 11 games but then dropped games to second and third-ranked Oakleigh and Bayswater, and battled for a draw against Altona in a quarter-final.
Dean conceded his side was not the form team of the final four.
“We lost form at the wrong end of the year,” he said. “We weren’t playing well late; we changed the batting order a few times, there was always something amiss in this last month.”
Noble Park won the toss and elected to bat on day one, posting 186.
If Dean had been offered that target before the day started, he would have taken it with open arms, but when you have a side 7-110 and let the final three partnerships combine for more than 70 runs, you might look back on it as the period that cost the Tigers the match.
“They might’ve got 20 too many,” Dean said. “We just couldn’t get those last three wickets to knock over the tail.”
The Tigers found it hard to negotiate the new ball themselves, slumping to 4-38. They had middle-order revivals through Dean (54), Wade McCall (18), Kyle Andrews (18) and then Pritchard, but the regular loss of wickets finally caught up with them.
At least the Tigers are in the running for one flag, with their second XI to host Oakleigh in the grand final at Chirnside Park this weekend.
