By Michael Esposito
A DEVASTATING century by Mount Waverley opener Navin Perera shut down any hope of a Werribee victory in the third round of the sub-district cricket season at Chirnside Park on Saturday.
Werribee made a reasonably competitive total of 198, but it was easily bettered by Mount Waverley, who passed the total with eight wickets to spare.
Perera, who scored an unbeaten 118 off 116 balls, was the biggest thorn in Werribee’s side, while fellow opener Michael Millier was a capable partner, hitting 54 before being dismissed by Werribee’s best performer David Wolfe.
Wolfe got Werribee off to a solid start with a well-made 70, before being run out. At that point, Werribee was 2/106 and still sitting pretty, but four quick wickets to Mount Waverley swung the advantage back in the away side’s favour.
In some respects, Werribee was the master of its own demise, with fellow opener Adam Duxson also being run out, and lower order batsman Robert Dixon (27), who was making up for the middle order’s paltry contribution, also being dismissed in the same way.
“We probably lost a group of wickets in our middle order which didn’t enable us to put on an extra 40 or 50 runs, which would have helped,” Werribee club coach Travis Bean said.
“We thought that (198) was a competitive score. We were a little bit worried it might not be enough, but as it turned out Mount Waverley were a strong side and they had an opening partnership which we couldn’t break.
“We tried a few things, we swung the bowling around a little bit to try and upset them a little bit, but it didn’t work.”
Werribee sits in fourth position, after the decision to play the previous week in sub-par weather paid off, as the side came away with the six points when the majority of teams decided to abandon their match and call it a draw.
“It was only our second game and we lost one and won one. Nobody likes losing, but you have a look at it when you settle down and think: our guys gave 100 per cent,” Bean said.“Sometimes you come off the ground and think we did this wrong, we did that wrong, but yesterday (Saturday) wasn’t one of those days, we executed everything really well and the breaks just didn’t come our way. It was one of those days.
“It showed us probably where we are and the improvements we have to make. We didn’t do too badly in the field. I can’t really fault a lot our guys for what they did, other than to say Mount Waverley batted really well.”
