Scotch College

Cricket’s movers and shakers win back-to-back flags

Words: Mr Ben Doherty Photography: Mr Tim Shearer

Just before 9pm on Friday 7 March, Melbourne was rocked by an earthquake measuring 4.6 on the Richter scale. Seismologists, puzzled by the unusual phenomenon, calculated that the epicentre of the quake was at Korumburra. They were wrong.

The earthquake Melbourne felt was not the shifting of tectonic plates under a sleepy Gippsland village. This was no ordinary earth tremor. It was the irreversible movement of the Melbourne sporting landscape, the upturning of a decades-old, safely-held, competition stereotype, the emerging ascendancy of Scotch over Xavier.

It is history now – and kind history too, for we intend to write it – that the Old Scotch Cricket Club defeated its Old Xavier rivals in the most thrilling grand final in decades, two days after that fateful tremor.

After taking a game apiece in the best-of-three series, Old Scotch was steered home in the decider by its phlegmatic talisman Gary Bennett, who coaxed two fours from three balls to find victory with less than an over to spare.

Ecstatic does not do justice to the reaction. Formidable barely begins to describe the celebrations. But the Scotchies’ season, it must be said – coming as it did off a drought-breaking premiership last year – was not one of total dominance. The team made its mistakes on occasion, wavered in its intensity some weeks. It even dropped

its final home-and-away game of the year to the lowly MCC, with a six from the final ball.

It would have been enough to break lesser teams. But come finals time, Old Scotch came to play. It steamrolled Old Melburnians in its semi-final to book itself a place in the last contest of the year, and a chance to right the wrongs of so many past Scotch–Xavier contests.

For too long Xavier has enjoyed an inexplicable dominance over Scotch in sporting competition. School cricket and football, Old Boys’ sport, tiddlywinks, marbles – black and red every time.

No longer. Scotch now enjoys bragging rights. It intends to keep them, and across all competitions.

The cricket grand final was notable for too many achievements to be properly noted here.

These elements of the story are known to those who need to, and to refrain from recording them in print allows more easily for their embellishment as summers come to pass.

But one act on that desperate last afternoon deserves comment. It was an act, not of glory, not of self-aggrandisement, but of sacrifice. George Dick, scarcely arrived at the crease and yet to face a missile from a Xavier leather-flinger, saw a ball struck to what some saw as a gap. His partner took off for a run. Put simply, George did not.

A reign of confusion – it is not the time now, or indeed, ever, to point the finger of blame – saw both batsmen standing at the same end of the pitch. George looked at his partner, and realising the game’s conclusion turned on that player’s contribution, ran, and ran himself out.

It was a quiet act, a decision made in an instant, but it summed up Scotch’s afternoon, its grand final epic, its entire season. George was prepared to give up his own wicket to benefit the team. He was prepared to sacrifice himself for the greater good. The Scotch way. GS