We Are The Champions: B Grade Muddies Take Premiership
Tuesday March 31 2015, 4:30pm
The Astute Financial Douglas Muddies won the CFN B Grade Premiership on Saturday by a massive 159 runs, taking out the second premiership for the club this season.
The day started ominously, with Dan Harris M.I.A. from the meeting place at Craiglie. After numerous unanswered phone calls, a return call was made from Dan letting the boys know that he had a flat battery and couldn’t get there. Doing the mad dash, the boys picked him up and then headed off the Griffiths Park to resume the game.
However, on the way down, the lads received a sign that today was their day whereupon radio signal resumed, Zinc radio was turned on and ‘We are the Champions’ came blaring from the speakers.
Game On Boys!!
With Simon Cody returning the previous night from Brisbane, and still waiting upon the arrival from Randal Smith, also from Brisbane, to make it to the ground before play (his plane was scheduled to arrive at 9:20am, with the game starting at 10am), a few jitters were in the camp.
However, when Randy arrived with plenty of time to spare allowing for his half hour getting ready ritual, the lads lifted and got focused on the task at hand.
With only ten wickets needed to win, and a mountain to climb for the Toads, the Astute Muddies started the Toads demise early. Old captain Benny V obliged, removing the opener for 0 providing an easy chance for Ethan at keeper. After a couple of peaches setting up the comps leading run scorer with away swingers, BV then fired one in at the stumps to remove Etherington for 0 – the Toads 2 down for 1 run.
Adam Lucas then again set the mark for aggressive opening bowling, flooring Lesina in trying to dodge Luco’s pin point accurate bouncers. After setting him up, Luco found the edge, straight to first slip, only to see Uncle Red bobble the red ball and have it slip through his hands, arms, legs and knees hit the deck.
Working hard at controlling his anger, Luco then found the edge two balls later, this time only to see Cody bomb the chance at 5th slip / straight gully. Working at this weakness, Ben V then got Lesina to spoon a ball to Luco at gully to have the Toads 3 – 29.
With the Toads now feeling the pinch, they started looking for quick runs. But this change saw the ‘Big Show’ brought in to the game. With the batsmen making hard work of what should have been an easy two Sammy Evans chased down the ball, performed a super-charged pick and throw straight back to Luco at the stumps, who removed the bails with the batsmen still metres short of his crease.
At 4 – 30, Luco then decided to rip the guts out of the Toads middle order with the only sure fire way – hitting the stumps. Luco went bowled, bowled, LBW, bowled to claim his 10th wicket for the game and secure himself Man of the Grand Final game. The Toads had now lost wickets at 0, 1, 29, 30, 34, 54, 72 and 98. With only 2 wickets left and both V and Luco dusted, good guy Redderz and Nathan King took up the attack.
Redderz created lots of chances and showed his worth by tying the batsmen down, allowing Kingy to bowl with the wind and get some good pace up. Kingy then found the edge that was taken in a sharp and very ‘astute’ chance by Simon Cody at gully. At 9 – 99 and only one wicket remaining, the umpires, for some reason, decided to call for lunch, voiding the half hour extra play rule with one wicket left.
This break however, proved the undoing for the Toads, losing their pre-lunch composure. Kingy bowled the first ball after lunch to nearly have a caught and bowled. Before the second ball was bowled, in a final captaincy masterstroke, Benny Vik moved Luco back at mid-off by about 12 metres; Kingy obliged, bowling a good length ball to drive, which the batsmen did, and lofted the ball straight down Luco’s throat not having to move an inch to take the catch.
The Astute Muddies went up collectively as they dismissed the Toads for 99 runs to claim the win and the CFN Premiership in emphatic style. Jubilant celebrations were held, while reflecting upon a fantastic season.
Briefly halting their celebrations, showing what a sensational club this is, all the team and playing supporters then went to the centre wicket to get involved in a game of Cricket with Benny Vik and his sons, fielding and bowling for the two boys to bat.
Angus and Finn were absolutely stoked, talking about it for days afterwards. These simple but superb actions will go a long way in keeping these kids involved in Cricket, and show just what a bloody good bunch of blokes this club has. What an absolutely superb effort men!
Both C and B grade teams will now attend the annual CFN presentation night on April 18th in Cairns to collect their just rewards. Well done on a sensational season Astute Muddies – you deserve it!