Central Park-St Brendan’s too good for plucky Karramomus in top four Haisman Shield clash

Locked on identical 4-1 records after four one-dayers, Central Park and Karramomus arrived at Vibert Reserve on day two with matching ambitions, but walked away in very different moods.

By Saturday evening stumps, the Tigers had banked a 112-run win, a haul of momentum, and a little bit of revenge.

“It was pretty interesting; we were 9-160 when we batted, so to go from there to 9-210 in the space of 10 overs, going into yesterday, was a bit of an advantage for us,” Larkin said.

“We probably took a bit of momentum from that, but the way we bowled yesterday – in particular ‘Vids’ (Dwain Vidler) and ‘Rum’ (Ramadan Yze) – it was pretty clinical.

“It was pretty good to watch from the slip cordon, seeing them go about their business.

“We keep a few receipts like that and you want to get one back. We were happy we were able to do that, and pretty convincingly.”

Day one had belonged to the late order as veterans Yze and Vidler uncorked a partnership that supplemented the Tigers’ score to 9-210, something meaty enough to protect.

However, Karramomus’ reply on Saturday never found that same heartbeat.

On a Vibert Reserve deck offering enough for bowlers willing to hammer a length, Central Park’s attack settled in early and refused to budge.

Bloods openers Mitch McGrath and Ethan Baxter took a careful stance and managed to make it through the first 11 overs unscathed, but the latter was removed a few balls later for four as the run rate meandered along at two an over.

McGrath had played a more attacking role, but he too was sent packing four balls after Baxter’s dismissal, and Karramomus’ next three batters would fail to break double digits.

Nathan Jones (15 runs) and Luke Forge (16 runs) provided some middle order pushback, but by the time both had gone, Karramomus still required 143 runs for victory with two men left in the shed.

Ironically, one of those was Lachie Keady, their top scorer who arrived at number nine and punched out a gritty 31 off 61 balls – but as his wicket fell, so did the Bloods’ innings.

Larkin said both sides were similarly tentative in their approach, but the fact that the Tigers’ top order managed to carve out proper starts made a fair difference in the end.

“I think both sides actually batted quite similar in the sense that both teams probably didn’t take enough calculated risks to throw pressure back onto the bowlers,” he said.

“Our scoring rate wasn’t fantastic and you could probably argue that we weren’t throwing our wickets away, but from our end, we probably still didn’t get on the front shoe enough.

“It was probably the same for Karra; they were trying to do the right thing and putting value on their wickets, but at the same time they weren’t quite scoring.

“That invited a bit more pressure and we played on that pretty well from our end.”

With Central Park-St Brendan’s’ style starting to come together, Larkin hopes to build on the template in the coming weeks before Christmas.

The Tigers play Nagambie in the last two-dayer of the year before facing off against Kyabram in the one-day final, a prospect Larkin is ready to relish.

“Definitely the way we played on the weekend is the way we’d like to do things moving forward,” he said.

“There’s going to be times where we lose a couple of quick wickets or other teams get big partnerships, so I think we’ve still got a lot to do to get our game where it needs to be to win finals.

“Obviously with the one-day final in a couple of weeks, that’s pretty exciting and, hopefully, we can get one over Ky and get some silverware back before Christmas.”