Werribee captain Shaun Dean has blasted 112 not out in an emphatic return to form in the Victorian Sub-District Cricket Association.
Dean put his rough trot in the competition behind him to lead the Tigers to an imposing 6-272 against Sunshine on day one at Chirnside Park on Saturday.
He told the Weekly he was relieved to post a big score at club level after finding some touch with 35 in a recent representative game.
“I haven’t made too many runs in the first five hits and I’m not hiding that,” he said.
“The first round was not too bad – 40 not out – but apart from that it’s been relatively few and far between. My form hasn’t been great.
“To get a hundred when I was in a bit of a form slump … I was happy to get a couple out of the middle.”
Dean revealed a one-on-one training session with a confidant at Soldiers Reserve a fortnight ago had returned him to a positive frame of mind after a tough period.
He trained away from the team in an exhausting 90-minute session, with his every moved picked apart in a bid to find a solution for his form slump.
“He reiterated that there wasn’t anything too wrong with what I was doing,” Dean said. “He just fine-tuned a few things and that cleared my mind a little bit, as well as instilling some confidence that I wasn’t going as badly as my results suggested.
“There’s a lot goes on behind the scenes to making a score like this that not many probably understand.”
Dean batted at three for the Tigers, quashing talk of a possible entrance lower in the order.
He said that while the lack of runs had been playing on his mind, a demotion was never a serious consideration.
“I was never going to shy away from batting at three,” he said. “I’m the captain and I’ve got to lead from the front.”
Dean featured in a 115-run stand with his brother, Matt (65).
Matt had been in white-hot form with 55 and 122 in his previous knocks, and he added another half-century at the top of the order.
“He wasn’t travelling the best at the start of the year, but he’s hit a bit of a purple patch,” Shaun Dean said. “He’s in a pretty good head space at the moment.”
Michael Freeman got busy late in the day with some lusty hitting to make 46.
“He came in and whacked them from the start,” Dean said.
“One of us had to move the scoring on a little bit and he basically took the game away from them. We went from 160 to 240 in no time.”
If the Tigers can wrap up the victory on Saturday, they will take an undefeated record into Christmas.
