Victorian Premier Cricket 2024/25: St Kilda pile on 628 to clinch premiership after drawn grand final
After 19 long years, and for the 19th time, the famous St Kilda Cricket Club are once again champions of Victorian Premier Cricket after compiling the greatest score a final had seen in over century.
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After 19 long years, and for the 19th time, the famous St Kilda Cricket Club are once again premiers of Victorian Premier Cricket.
Asked to bat by Carlton skipper Evan Gulbis at the toss, the Saints did so diligently, and batted until they had put the result beyond doubt to finish with 628 from 239.5 overs — just one ball shy of a fourth new ball being required.
It was St Kilda’s highest score in a decider and one that had only once ever been topped on the grand final stage, over a century ago when Prahran piled on 688 in 1922.
Carlton was left with just 47 overs to reply, and finished with 5-95.
The clash was drawn, but it was enough for St Kilda to finish with the premiership in its grasp after a dominant season saw it top the ladder.
It was a match that, for the most part, lacked the sharp twists and trading of heavy blows that have become customary across the many classic finals Victorian Premier Cricket has produced.
Instead, with every meticulous defence and the occasional crunch which sent leather rocketing to the Junction Oval rope, St Kilda whittled away at Carlton’s will.
The Saints never broke it — which is a testament to this formidable Carlton side, one that has reached five grand finals in seven seasons for good reason — but they whittled for 1439 balls, whittled until the match could not be lost.
It was what was needed to finally deliver the premiership this proud club had longed for since its last famous dynasty.
Coach Glenn Lalor has been at the club’s helm for nine seasons, and played in its last premiership — which completed a famous four-peat — in 2005/06.
He was overawed with emotion after the match, and struggled to put the achievement into words.
“I played in the last premiership and the last losing grand final, lucky enough to be here today, we played extremely good cricket for three days,” Lalor said.
“(I’m) overwhelmed, but the group’s done a lot of hard work and we’ve missed out through a couple of prelims on behalf of Carlton, the boys did really well, really satisfied.”
Rising Victorian star Harry Dixon, still only 19 years of age, and former Test man Marcus Harris, laid the foundation with a 127-run opening stand.
Each was given a life as Carlton put down crucial chances in the field. Dixon finally fell when a miscued drive was caught by its bowler, workhorse Xavier Crone.
Crone skittled another newly-minted Victorian batter in Blake MacDonald two balls later, and all of a sudden it appeared the match could pivot on its axis.
Jonathan Merlo steadied the ship from number four, piling on a further 111 runs alongside Harris.
With a youthful blend of flair and patience, Dixon had struck 62 from 102 balls, while Merlo finished with 52 from 113.
A classy 374-ball 161 from Harris underpinned the Saints innings, until he was undone when a miscued flick against the leg spin of Michael Archer was snaffled at first slip.
The knock earned the 32-year-old the coveted John Scholes Medal as the player of the match.
Lalor lauded his opening pair, who he said were “huge”, adding that Harris was simply a class above.
“There was a dropped catch on three, a dropped catch on 30, and a dropped catch on 100, lucky,” Lalor said.
“But at the same time they chose to bowl and needed to take their chances early and it might have changed the course of the game maybe, I don’t know, we’ll never know.
“(Harris) had the temperament to bat for a day and still look fresh as a daisy at the end of the day, he rocked up on day two and we had a chat and he still wanted more runs,” Lalor said.
“You can’t buy that experience, not just for what he’s achieved but for our playing group to witness and watch someone go about it that’s played a higher level of cricket.”
Harris, who will jet off to England for the County season on Monday night just 24 hours after the match, admitted that he struggled early in his innings.
“It was a struggle early to be honest, I haven’t been in the best of form, the scenario of the game played into my favour and I knew if I could spend enough time out there it would come back to me a little bit,” Harris said.
“We were lucky, it was a good pitch to bat on, that’s the advantage of finishing on top of the ladder, you don’t have to force the game as much.
“It’s been a great three days. It can be disappointing on the other side but in our scenario it’s great, I loved it.”
Batting at number eight, champion Saint Adam Crosthwaite, now 40 years of age, took the match beyond Carlton’s grasp with his 31st century in Premier Cricket. He compiled a patient 126 from 304 balls.
“Awesome, to hit 100 in a final, I grew up watching district cricket for ages, I’ve been playing district cricket for 25 years, to get a 100 in a final means a lot, it’s huge,” Crosthwaite said.
“That 100 probably put the game out of reach for Carlton, that was the most satisfying thing from the whole thing.”
In total, only two Saints batters were dismissed having faced less than 96 balls, with a half century also coming for Thomas Russ.
“The batters were great, we’ve been doing so much work on the batting, mentally, as well as the skill was huge,” Crosthwaite said.
“Marcus Harris got us off to a great start, the way Dixon played, the way ‘Merlo’ played, you look through that whole list, a lot of guys took pressure.
“They kept coming, testament to Carlton, we know how good Carlton is, we know how dangerous they are, 450 probably wasn’t enough. We knew we had to push past 500, then it was 600, and it was just keep going. We couldn’t be happier.
“I think over the 230 overs we didn’t play too many bad shots. No one slogged, no one went outside their game.”
Carlton skipper Evan Gulbis was proud of his tireless troops, and believed they did all they could given the circumstances.
“If you look at our bowling group and they’ve scored at that rate for that amount of time, I think it’s phenomenal,” Gulbis said.
“We owed the game and we owed Premier cricket and St Kilda the diligence to give our best for every ball of this game and we did, we didn’t change our batting order, we stuck with our bowlers, we kept cracking on with our best that we had, we didn’t lighten up. We owed the game that.”
“In this situation there’s not many groups that would perform the way that we did. After nearly three days we were still cracking on, still chasing balls to the fence … we’ve tried to take on a formidable outfit in this game to be premiers, we took it on, we tried our best, and we weren’t good enough.”
The Blues bowling attack, led by lionheart Crone, never relented.
Crone sent down 48.5 overs and finished with 6-138.
“It’s a phenomenal effort, in some respects I sit there and go, well that’s Croney, I don’t expect anything different,” Gulbis said.
Archer sent down 49 overs, 12 of which were maidens, for 2-114, and top quick Cam Stevenson finished with 1-138 from 44 overs.
Tom Smyth (1-47) and Gulbis (0-54) chipped in with 33 and 30 overs respectively.
Speaking after the match, Gulbis defended his decision to bowl first, and said that if he had elected to bat instead “there was no chance of victory”.
“As the lower ranked side you need to try and create the game, we might’ve missed a couple of opportunities, especially early, but at the end of the day when you’re the lower ranked team on a good batting track you need to try and create an opportunity to know what your batters need to do,” Gulbis said.
“We could’ve tried and potentially batted a day and a session and made 350 or something like that and then they just bat it out.
“(Bowling) was our best chance to win, even speaking to other people around the game and the opposition they were potentially going to bowl as well … you’ve got to give yourselves a chance to win and batting first would’ve taken that out of our grasp.”
With no compulsory closure on the first team’s batting innings, Crosthwaite maintained that “the rules are the rules”.
He cited the famous district tale of when Bill Lawry led Northcote to the premiership with 282 not out after Essendon had declared on 9-514 at tea on day two.
“If you’re good enough to bat for two and a half days, you deserve to win,” Crosthwaite said.
“We were just able to grind and the end result was, yeah, we didn’t win the game, but we won the competition. Pretty happy with that.”
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