ESSENTIALLY cricket is a team sport.
Eleven players on each side combining together for the common cause.
Invariably though, when it comes to the big games, the matches that matter, it is the
performances of one individual that comes to the fore.
A contribution so vital that it separates victory from defeat.
When members of the Big O and Harden sides gather at Albert Park tomorrow for the 63rd
staging of the Merrin Cup grand final, all 22
players will have it in the back of their minds - who is going to be the difference today.
Both teams are littered with potential match-winners, that’s why they’re the last two standing.
Both have some lesser lights who, if the moons of fortune align, could shine brighter than the established stars.
So who will be remembered as the hero of the 2008/09 Merrin Cup decider?
Let’s start at the top, the one player from each side that their respective teammates will be
banking on in their quest for glory.
Darren Connell from Big O and Simon Doolan from Harden.
Class acts with years of experience, not just at the local level but on the representative stage as well.
Two innings ago Connell smashed an unbeaten 105 against Stockinbingal, a team that will be fighting for their own piece of silverware
tomorrow in the Sparre Cup grand final.
Connell is a wizard with the willow and a player who thrives under the spotlight of the big games.
With the little red rock in his hand, Doolan is a one-man wrecking machine.
His performance last week where he decimated Central 1 with the astonishing figures of 5-6 off ?? overs highlighted yet again that, despite his age creeping to the point where the balls he bowl should be bigger, blacker and with a bias, Doolan is the master of the craft.
But Big O is not exclusively about Connell, nor is Doolan the lone shark in the pool of potential from Harden.
Several others will be gunning for the opportunity to take the bit between the teeth and make tomorrow’s clash, a replay of last year’s decider, their own.
Will it be Michael Buttriss, a dynamic allrounder too often pushed into the shadows thrown by his more revered Big O teammates.
Buttriss only knows one way to go with the bat and if it pays off, the Olympic team’s start will be more explosive than Usain Bolt’s.
Harden too has a muscle man. Jason Pollard, with arms like Popeye, throws the bat around as if it were a toothpick.
He is power personified and while his average for the year may be a modest 31, he wastes no time at the crease in accumulating his runs.
Then there’s Scott Meale and Bill Stanley.
Not as aggressive as the above mentioned pair, but both critical to their team’s chances of posting a score.
Meale will be sent out to face the music, open the innings and build a platform. Patient yes, tedious no, Meale will punish anything short of a length or wide of the mark.
Stanley has so often been Harden’s saviour his teammates could be forgiven for dubbing him the Messiah.
Able to continue in the vein set by those above him, or dig his side out of a trough so deep that some of his height challenged colleagues may struggle to see over.
But what if the big guns don’t fire?
Are there other players in the ranks capable of producing that once-in-a-season performance when the pressure is on?
Players such as Dean Guthrie for Big O whose floating spin could entice over-eager batsmen out of their crease like a fly to a web?
Or Harden’s Kai Steele who could be given a task at the top of the order and who, despite a top score of 50 this summer, would not have attracted much interest in Big O’s pre-game discussions?
Tomorrow’s final will produce a winner, just as it will produce a man-of-the-match.
Just who that is remains to be seen.
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