First Eleven Premiership 2019/20

Winning tough.

It certainly wasn’t a win for the ages. But in Grand Finals winning is what counts, and Moonee Valley did that to secure our 2019/20 First Eleven premiership.

We had been determined to atone after being relegated in the previous year, and our key focus under new coach Tony Gleeson was getting back up.

Mission accomplished. No matter how ugly it looked, or how crazy the Grand Final scorecard appears, we held on with a magnificent rearguard action. And when the VTCA called off the game after two days of the four-day Grand Final, the spoils belonged to the team which finished top of the table. Moonee Valley.

Not without those anxious moments on Day 2, though. We crept to 8/78 chasing Sunbury’s 232, and had we not had wickets in hand at the end of the second day the game would have been awarded to our opponents. That was fighting tough from Joshua Gorry and Anthony Cafari.

Caf soaked up 156 balls for his 37 before falling late on Day 2, while Joshua withstood 206 in his marathon 34 not out.
At right: Our First Eleven premiers! L-R Sameera Vithana (front), Nadeera Thuppahi, Shiwantha Kumara, Jack Newman, Anthony Cafari, Sumit Anand, Bede Gannon, Channa DeSilva, Sam Walker (front), Daniel Comande and coach Tony Gleeson. 

It was enough to get us over the line with an incomplete first innings when the VTCA heeded the call from Cricket Australia and Cricket Victoria to call off all further play and games.

We had worked hard on covering and protecting the Ormond Park pitch in the week leading up to Day 1 of the March 14/15/21/22 Grand Final, and it was in perfect nick.

Captain Jack Newman won the toss and elected to bowl, with advice from the curator that the only life in the pitch was likely to be in the first hour or two.

Our opening attack couldn’t quite nail the right lengths for the pitch. And while the Sunbury openers were cautious and weren’t getting away from us, neither were we troubling them greatly.

But in the 10^th over one of the batsmen lost patience and chased a wide ball from Bede Gannon he could have left alone, snicking it through to keeper Channa DeSilva and we had our first wicket at 33.

We had to wait until after the tea break and the 44^th over before we struck again. Their No. 3 had been upping the pace. The wily Sameera Vithana had been toiling away for 10 overs, but got one through to take the second wicket clean bowled, with the score 2/125. Sammy struck again in his next over, with the No. 4 gone for a duck and suddenly a bit of light at the end of the tunnel at 3/125.

The gritty opener Nelson had lasted 54 overs for his 45, but Sammy got one through him with the score at 138 – with all his victims bowled.

Josh Gorry then took a sharp catch at slip off Sammy and we had them 5/146 and feeling that we were getting back into the game.

Sammy again rattled the stumps of the incoming batsman and we had them 6/149. Sammy was tying up Sunbury, bowling a marathon from the northern end, while we toiled without success from the Ormond Rd end.

But Jack swung Anthony Cafari into attack from the southern end and he quickly picked up a wicket courtesy of a Gorry catch – 7/160.

Sammy Vithana picked up his sixth wicket with five overs left in the first day’s play, thanks to a sharp stumping from Channa. Score 8/201.

We were right in this now. Sunbury saw off the rest of the overs to finish the day with 208 on the board, and Moonee Valley was confident we could limit the damage on Day 2.

Sammy Vithana had bowled a marathon 28 overs unchanged – three from the southern end before switching to the pavilion end – and finished the day with a well-deserved 6/79.

He bowled a further two overs on Day 2 before our quicks finished off the tail for 232 – with skipper Jack Newman getting a snick through to Channa, and Caf having a catch lob to Shiwantha Kumara.

The equation: Aim for first innings points, and see where the match takes us from there. And we had the spectre of the world-wide coronavirus pandemic creating uncertainty about what was happening one day to the next.

Sunbury had used up 10 overs on Day 2, and with the changeover there were a further 67 overs in the day. Here's the GF scorecard.

We were confident that we would get the job done. But the confidence was misplaced. We were 1/0 (Sam Walker) off the fifth ball of the innings.

Then we were 2/0 (Sameera Vithana) off the final ball of the third over. A bye finally got the scoreboard moving.

Then we were 3/1, 4/1 and 5/1 as Daniel Comande, Nadeera Thuppahi and Channa DeSilva delivered Sunbury’s Jason McGann a hat-trick and five wickets without a run being taken off him.

Despite confidence at the start we had the rug pulled out from under us to have lost half our wickets within five overs.

Anthony Cafari was at the non-striker’s end watching the hat-trick unfold before him. Joshua Gorry came in at No. 7, and after seeing off the double hat-trick ball scored the first runs off the bat with a two.

Backs against the wall stuff.

And that’s exactly what Caf and Gorry did. It wasn’t pretty, but it was gritty. From a position at the start of the day where we were planning on a first innings lead by the end of play, we were suddenly fighting for survival.

The target had changed to having wickets in hand at day’s end. And Caf and Josh put their heads down. They were together for 57 overs before Caf got bowled for 37, with the score on 72. He faced 156 balls in laying down his defiance.

The landscape changed. We lost another two wickets for ducks – Sumit Anand and Jack Newman, and all the hard work by Caf and Joshua was in danger of being for naught.

But Shiwantha Kumara saw off two balls, then with Joshua saw off a maiden for the final over of the day. Score 8/78 and we were still alive.

Joshua faced 206 balls for his 34 not out, and with Caf undoubtedly saved the game for us. They were the only two players to score runs – we had seven ducks, and Shiwantha was still not off the mark.

The Grand Final wasn’t a win for the ages. But in the case of Caf and more importantly Joshua Gorry, it was an innings for the ages. Joshua’s 206 balls translates to 34 overs-plus he faced himself. What a marathon effort.

We were already planning our approach to the game for Days 3 and 4 – the following weekend. The plan was to attack with the bat from the start, hopefully put on 50 to 100 runs to limit the deficit, then play it as a normal two-day game with the third and fourth innings.

Channa and Jack had played a big part in turning a Grand Final first innings deficit into an outright in the second dig when we won the Seconds flag in 2014/15, and were confident we could do it again.

But circumstances overtook us. Cricket Australia cancelled the Sheffield Shield final and recommended a stop to all other cricket. Cricket Victoria went even stronger, and said it expected all associations to cease immediately, regardless of the state of play.

The VTCA took an extra day, but then toed the party line and cancelled Days 3 and 4.

We had been in what many thought were diabolicals at the end of Day 2, but our hard work throughout the season to earn top spot on the ladder paid off, as the highest-placed team in a game with an incomplete first innings won through.

Moonee Valley Premiers 2019/20. It wasn’t pretty, and the scorecard doesn’t look flash – seven players with ducks. But it is what it is, and that’s a Moonee Valley First Eleven premiership – the 13^th in our history. Well done boys. You did all the hard work to deserve it.