Ramadan Yze, Central Park-St Brendan’s bowling maestro, rattled off a Cricket Shepparton one-day grand final masterpiece as he bottled Nagambie’s batting order with an intoxicating return of 4-5 off seven suffocating overs.
His spell was less cricket, more alchemy - turning fire into ashes as Nagambie crumbled for 42.
The chase? A formality, wrapped up in under 12 overs.
But this was Yze’s day, awarded the Rohan Larkin Medal for a best-on-ground performance to claim an honour named after a man he once shared the field with.
In summation of a whirlwind day at the office, the man himself hit the nail on the head.
“Everything just seemed to work today,” he said.
“They nicked everything, we caught everything, so it was a good all-round performance.
“To roll them for 42 on this deck at their home ground, we'll take that any day of the week and for the batters to come out and do it one down, you couldn’t have asked for a better performance.”
Yze, like many others, exorcised two years’ worth of demons on Sunday.
Having been involved in the Tigers’ consecutive one-day grand final losses, the starring man’s whiz-bang bowling lifted a hex that hung heavy on the Deakin Reserve tenants’ subconscious.
“Not much was said about those losses, but personally, deep down they did hurt,” he said.
“It's always burning in your gut to get one back; you never get them back, but when you’re in you want to make the most of it.
“All we spoke about was stick to our game plan, stick to our guns and if things don't go well, we know what works and just stick to it.
“So today, like I said, everything worked so it was good to get the win.”
A man of the match performance, brewed to perfection, was delivered on the grand stage by Yze.
In Central Park-St Brendan’s folklore, one thing is certain - this vintage of ‘Rum’ will age beautifully.
