Belgrave are Knox Tavern Cup champions

BELGRAVE Cricket Club’s first XI has won its second Knox Tavern Cup in four years after defeating Ferntree Gully at the Ferntree Gully ground this weekend.
The club’s pervious win was against Upper Ferntree Gully in 2003/04 under the captaincy of Scott Vozzo, this year Chris Dalkin has joined to lead the side to an even more satisfying victory in 2006/07.
Ferntree Gully finished top of the FTGDCA ladder at the end of the season, while Belgrave survived some mid-season wobbles to finish third and despatch Johnson Park in the semi-final.
The side always had confidence that they could beat any other side on a day when they all pulled together, and so it turned out on the biggest weekend of the year.
Batting first Belgrave felt a good total on day one would put them in the box seat against a Gully side that has not faired that well with the bat this year.
Opener Jonathon Levell got the start the side needed making 40 while reluctant first grader David Ayre chipped in a valuable 33.
Day one belonged, as it did in the semi-final to Lynton Toms whose 61 late in the day (including a 58-run seventh wicket stand with Nick Bole-Brown) pushed the Belgrave total to a healthy 9/235.
In reply runs came quickly, but wickets fell as Bole-Brown took an early wicket, and Simon Hill created havoc with the Gully top order taking 3/32. Vozzo also took 2 wickets sending Gully into the tea break with plenty of runs on the board, but only 4 wickets in hand.
After tea Toms broke a dangerous seventh wicket partnership and Udara Silva removed Graham Salan tipping the balance Belgrave’s way. Toms then mopped up the tail to finish with 3/25.
His three-wicket haul and his first day 61 earned him the Steven Lee Medal for the best player in the Grand Final, an award he will surely cherish even more than his Feaver and Lomax medals.
Toms has turned around a prolonged slump in form at the most important time of the year, surely a sign of a player of the utmost quality.
Belgrave’s second XI were in Grand Final action this weekend, but let themselves down with the bat a week after they posted a semi-final 404, and never looked in the game.
Congratulations to Martin Wood’s men for making the Grand Final and topping the table at the end of the season, and also congratulations to the thirds and fourths for making the semi-finals and playing some particularly good cricket through the year.
Four senior teams in finals and the Knox Tavern Cup on the mantlepiece, and all in Belgrave Cricket Club’s 99th year.
Next year the club celebrates its centenary and committee and players alike will be very keen to go back-to-back in the firsts and to bring home even more success in the lower grades to make Belgrave’s 100th year one of the most successful in a long history.