By Tara Murray
A demolition job with the ball helped Altona Sports complete the perfect Western Suburbs Churches and Community Cricket Association A.E Lowe Shield season.
Having moved its top side back to the Churches competition this season, Sports didn’t know what to expect.
With a new two-day competition, the side was quickly the pace setters.
On Saturday, Sports completed the perfect season with a big win against Western United in the grand final.
Sports captain Liam Brennan said it was pretty good to be back on top.
“It was a quick day in the end,” he said. “We thought it could have gone either way, they go pretty hard or it goes all day.
“We got the big wicket early on of Kazi [Shamiul Islam] and rolled through them in the end.
“We were done by 3.30pm.”
Sports made 320 on day one with Khush Talati making 134 to rescue the innings.
Day two was meant to be last Sunday, but rain meant it was postponed until Saturday.
On Saturday, Altona Sports needed just 36 overs to roll Western United for 69.
Brennan said they’d had some good performances throughout the season and rolled some teams for less than 50 but they didn’t expect that performance in a grand final.
Tom Harrison was the star of the show with 8-27.
“He opened the bowling and bowled 17 overs straight,” Brennan said. “To take 8fa is crazy.”
Harrison was awarded man of the match for this bowling performance.
Brennan said he couldn’t split Harrison and Talati and gave him his own man of the match medal after the game.
The captain said they were really happy with how the season turned out. They also finished runners-up in the T20 competition.
“We weren’t sure how we would come back after a couple of years out of this competition,” he said.
“We weren’t sure what the competition was and we had lost a couple of key guys.
“It was really good and we had a lot of young guys and to go through undefeated is unbelievable.
“There were six or seven guys in the T20 final as well.”
Overall the club won two senior premierships and had four teams in grand finals.
Brennan, who is also senior president, said it was a really good year for the club.
The aim for the future now is to continue to make the program stronger while the club continues to look at options to play on turf.
Tara Murray
