Day of good and hard luck

For some divisions, finals are already upon us while others have just arrived at this stage, which guaranteed one thing: a lot of cricket that didn’t make much sense.

Child boys learn from the Marsters

Sundries opens this week with a look at a Whitelock Shield affair between Mooroopna and Kyabram, for which Rechelle Zammit captured our feature gallery.

The prior 16 rounds had not been kind to the Cats, already mathematically eliminated from the finals race and shortly two wickets down after Brett and Dylan Child fell to Paul McInnes.

In stepped Robert Marsters to right those wrongs, though.

Batting like everything was still on the line for Mooroopna, Marsters lived up to his name in a mesmerising, windshield-threatening display of devil-may-care deeds with the bat.

Notching nine fours and six sixes, Marsters contributed 36 runs through each type of boundary — an extra satisfying point for all the other stats nerds out there.

More importantly, though, Marsters worked his way to a well-earned century before retiring not out on 102, his contribution playing a pivotal role in a 44-run win that ended the Cats’ season on a high.

When the Marsters come along, sometimes nobody has the answers.

This game did happen ... right?

As employees of The News, it’s sometimes hard for the Sundries writers to lay off the Central Park-St Brendan’s C-grade side — for obvious reasons.

With that said, the decision to highlight its season-ending Jim McGregor Shield encounter with Mooroopna stems more from what we don’t know about the game, which is virtually everything.

Allegedly, Central Park batted first and found itself in the sheds for 113, which Mooroopna chased down without a second thought — or a first wicket.

PlayHQ listed no data whatsoever beyond those team figures, though sources within the newsroom suggest there may have been a memorable catch at short leg; in C-grade, this would go down as a near-unicorn event, especially in a T20 fixture.

If anyone wanted to claim they took nine or 10 Tiger scalps that day or opened the Cats’ batting with an unbeaten century, that would be your prerogative.

When the technology fails, you can take all the creative licence you like.

Don’t blink, you’ll miss something

Good heavens, was the Mooroopna-Central Park Clyde Young Shield game ever eventful.

The fourth innings was more definitive than the first three, but there was plenty to take in.

Andrew Boyington did most of the heavy lifting as the Tigers posted 145 first up before Rory Duffy matched Simon D’Elia’s five-for with one of his own, removing three Cats for ducks in a meagre response of 51.

Suddenly, the door swung open on day two when D’Elia moved to eight wickets for the match as the Tigers collapsed to 69 all out, with a lead of 163.

You may have yet to see such an eventful 10-over spell as what followed as the Cats went for broke.

Seeing it was now or never, Mooroopna attempted to pick up the pace, but found its order corralled at every turn.

Opening bowlers Duffy and Haris Hassan — the only two Central Park had time to trot out — made compelling counter-arguments with the ball for every positive step with the bat.

When the dust settled on this 10-over frenzy, Mooroopna had forced its way to 7-78, but in sensing the firepower was no longer there, that was all she wrote.

It was a blockbuster cricketing cameo, albeit one that forced the Cats to rely on a second chance in the semis.

Back-to-back brushes for Brett

Poor, poor Tim Brett.

Last week, Sundries highlighted how agonisingly close Brett had come to earning a hat-trick for Northerners in the Jim McGregor Shield against Invergordon and how one could make a technical case for awarding it.

He’s only gone and one-upped himself this time in a top-versus-bottom meeting with Murchison.

This was no dead rubber, either; Northerners knew only a win would certainly maintain its grip on top spot heading into finals.

While Brett failed to replicate the previous week’s batting heroics, his side rode the fortunes of Aaron Burney’s impactful 70 — not to mention 36 wides — in posting a respectable 192 off its 30 overs.

On the bowling end, Murchison started with a flash of light that gave way to a blown socket as a first-ball boundary got countered by two first-over Brett wickets.

Northerners’ most in-form bowler wasn’t done there, though, saving his best for the game-closing final over.

With Murchison at 6-48 and all but buried, Brett claimed back-to-back victims to put himself in a familiar position.

Ronald Turvey had to be a spoilsport, surviving the hat-trick ball, but a hungry Brett killed the game off with the following two deliveries at Turvey and Jonathon Cooper’s expense.

A dot denied one hat-trick opportunity, the next denied because Murchison ran out of potential sacrifices.

Again, though, Brett can console himself with his figures of 6-22 and the fact his destructive showing brought Northerners the minor premiership.