The ‘nervous 90s’ are an uncomfortable time for all batters, let alone someone approaching their first ever hundred.
Just ask Springvale South’s Mitch Forsyth.
His DDCA Turf 1 season had contained plenty of starts (28, 16, 21, 10, 30, 36 and 19) but up until Saturday there was no big score yet to capitalise on those foundations.
So as the runs piled-up against St Mary’s at Carroll Reserve, the rollercoaster of emotions set off.
“I’d been struggling this season to get past 30 and 40, which is almost my role for the team, to hang around, see off the new ball,” Forsyth said.
“We’ve got a pretty powerful line-up so I don’t really have to hang around too often, but it’s been a bit of a frustration, so when I got 50 I was actually rapt.
“After that I started to score quite freely and one of the boys ran out to say that I was on 90 and I thought, ‘I’m starting to get a bit nervous now,’ having never made a hundred or even got past 80 before.
“When I got to 99, they ran out a drink again and said that I’m on 99, and I started to get really nervous because I’d never got one and didn’t really know what to do.”
Taking strike at the start of the over, just one run away, he calmly blocked the first delivery back to the bowler for a dot ball.
The second, a fuller ball on his pads, saw Forsyth drop to one knee and paddle the ball around the corner to a vacant square leg, and off he went.
Having taken a deflection off his pad on the way through, all that was left was for the umpire to award the stroke as runs, and not leg-byes.
But of course, umpires don’t signal for runs.
The batter knew, his teammates knew, and seemingly the umpire knew, but the moment of glory had to wait a few more agonising seconds.
“I kept calm and was almost showing him my bat, almost like saying ‘please don’t call a leg bye’. The boys went up, and it was such a special moment for me, I was rapt,” Forsyth said.
“The boys said it was very anticlimactic and that I should have just celebrated halfway through (the run) so that he didn’t have a decision to make, but I didn’t want to look like an idiot so I just held off and got the big cheer, then had a bit of a celebration which was nice.”
After removing his helmet and acknowledging him teammates, including his brother, Cam, he was swallowed in a hearty embrace by his opening partner Ryan Quirk, who appeared more excited with his teammate’s milestone than his own in the previous over.
“I’ve grown up with ‘Quirky’ and his family and my family are really close, so even just as an opening partner we have a lot of fun out there,” Forsyth said.
“Specifically on advice, I think the only thing that he suggested was, when someone said I was on 90, we were scoring quite quickly runs-wise, and team-wise we were quite comfortable.
“He said to me, ‘just try to hit 10 singles, opportunities like this to make 100 in Turf 1 don’t come around too often,’ so he was really good.
“I was thinking something silly, like, should I try and hit another boundary? But he said, ‘go for the 10 singles because the team’s in a really good position and these opportunities don’t come around too often,’ so that was the biggest thing.’
Finishing not out on 149, the two shared in a flawless 248-run opening stand, a new club record at the Bloods, putting their side in a commanding position, before their bowlers rammed-home the advantage, dismissing St Mary’s for 94 to secure a 202-run victory.
Josh Dowling and the returning Matt Wetering took three wickets each, with Wetering also contributing a run out.
“We’re always trying to keep the foot on the throat and we know that in finals any team can take the game away from you on any day, so we really wanted to stick to what we’re about and get the job done, which we were able to do quite convincingly in the end, which was pleasing for sure,” Forsyth said.
For the defending champions of Turf 1, Forsyth said there’s hunger in the group to go back-to-back, and will be tested in the coming weeks with fixtures against North Dandenong and Buckley Ridges.
“We’re pretty clear on what we need to do, we’re sitting quite comfortable at 8-0, which is really pleasing, but the biggest thing is that we’ve still got quite a bit that we can work on, we’ve still got another level that we can go to,” he said.
“We’re very aware that on any day, anyone can win it, especially in finals when the pressure’s up and there’s a little bit more on the line.”
