The Cats dominated the round 12 Haisman Shield clash at Howley Oval, cleaning up the home side's first innings quick enough to ask it to follow-on.
From there the going got tougher in the field — with Tatura captain Michael Archer (28) and openers Raj Singh (28) and David Miller (33) adding to their respective first-innings scores of 35, 23 and 35 — but once the top order was out of the way the visitors were able to tidy up the 10 points comfortably.
“At the start of the day we just wanted to go out there and play finals cricket and get the win,” Mooroopna coach Brad Lowe said.
“It eventually panned out that we were able to push for the outright after the floodgates opened a bit.”
Henry Barrow and Shoaib Shaikh were the shining lights for the Cats, setting their side up for success with stellar performances.
Barrow finished with figures of 5-67 in Tatura's first innings of 125 before backing it up with 5-26 as the home side fell for 135, his 10-93 taking his season tally to 41 wickets at an average of 10.5.
“We spoke at the start of the day about not being too aggressive with our bowling, just looking to hit that line and length all day,” Lowe said.
“Henry bowled (heaps) of overs and just wanted the ball in his hand, he was brilliant.”
Shaikh added a quick-fire 18 not out late in the day for the Cats to claim the outright win to his 92 on day one, but also proved his skill with ball in hand to snare 2-9 in Tatura's second innings.
“Early on in that second dig they dug in and we were struggling to get a breakthrough, but Shoaib came on and took a couple of wickets and really put some life into the game,” Lowe said.
“Running into a bit of confidence is great for him leading into finals.”
The Cats are now third on the table with Central Park-St Brendan's to come this weekend, while Tatura faces Numurkah in its last match of the season.
THE GAME
Mooroopna 9-245 dec (Shoaib Shaikh 92, Jake Wright 61, John Kealey 4-25) and 0-19 (Shoaib Shaikh 18 not out) d Tatura 125 (Michael Archer 35, David Miller 25, Henry Barrow 5-67) and 135 (David Miller 33, Raj Singh 28, Michael Archer 28, Henry Barrow 5-26, Shoaib Shaikh 2-9, Simon D'Elia 2-30).
STAR PLAYER
Henry Barrow (Mooroopna): Match figures of 10-93 from the English import edges out teammate Shoaib Shaikh's all-round efforts for the Cats. Barrow ripped through Tatura twice to secure a crucial outright victory for his side.
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