Gallery | Pine Lodge do it the hard way to win under-14 B-grade flag over valiant Waaia
It might have been a junior match, but the under-14 B-grade Cricket Shepparton grand final between Pine Lodge and Waaia may be one of the wildest matches played all summer.
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Scintillating spells and batting collapses, courageous knocks with the willow, and young guns that withstood the heat and pressure of the moment to deliver clutch performances at the most critical of times - it had everything.
At Princess Park, Waaia won the toss and elected to chase, as it did so successfully against minor premier Euroa in the semi-final, sending the green and gold onto the turf pitch.
Both sides came into the match after defeating rivals that finished higher on the ladder in the semis, with the third and fourth-placed teams sharing a record of 4-5 across the home and away season.
But that was all data for the background on Sunday morning - what mattered most was which club could deliver its best on the last date of the summer.
And for a while, it seemed the fourth-ranked Waaia was the team to do so.
Oscar Carey bowled Patrick Segrave for one in the second over, before dislodging the bails again in the sixth over to dismiss Dion Arthur - the Lodgers at 2-9.
The ball was doing plenty for Oscar Nichol too, cannoning the Kookaburra into Nash Waters’ stumps, while Sofia Van Taarling faced an identical fate.
Opener Edward Freeman dug deep to make 22 off 54, but when he fell, so did two others, and the Bombers had soared to a winning position, leaving the Lodgers reeling at 9-58.
But as the saying goes, it’s never over until it’s over, and it was the one final wicket that eluded Waaia that nosedived their flag ambitions.
Sam Malcolm and Liam Raleigh rallied together to put on a remarkable stand that started off as tail end frustration for Waaia, but turned into a match-winning partnership.
Malcolm batted with poise, and with only boundary to his name, he chose to pierce gaps and run between wickets, while Raleigh took on the bowlers with aggression.
In the biggest match of his burgeoning cricket career, Raleigh entered a zone of hitting the youngster has never produced before, more than doubling his previous high score for the season, and smashing his way to a personal best 44 not out, and smoking a career-first six in the process.
The 81-run stand breathed life back into the Lodgers, seeing out all 45 overs with a score of 9-139.
The 10th-wicket partnership had clearly rattled Waaia’s confidence too.
Lodgers’ Waters and Max Wyatt shared a clinical start with the pill, the Bombers scrambling at 4-6, then 5-12.
At 8-59, the game looked lost.
Enter Oscar Nichol.
The number 10 bat left little to the imagination, and although the Bombers had plenty of time to chase Pine Lodge’s target, Nichol decided to amplify pressure on the bowlers, and did so from the get go.
First ball: six. Second ball: four. Belief: building.
All of a sudden the Lodgers’ cruisy grand final victory was being threatened, as Nichol picked apart the attack.
Miller Butler fell in the 23rd over to have Waaia nine down with 31 runs to chase, but Nichol had more in the tank.
The red and black blaster hit his side within 18 runs of victory, but it was the gun bowling duo of Wyatt and Waters that ensured it would be a Pine Lodge premiership.
Wyatt fired up a seaming delivery, which was clobbered away by Nichol, but it would fall into Waters’ safe hands.
A high-octane finish to a chaotic back-and-forth affair, the Lodgers claimed their flag in the most entertaining fashion by 18 runs, Waaia all out for 121.
The premiership sees Pine Lodge go back-to-back in under-14 B-grade after its 2024-25 heroics against Karramomus.