They say good things come to those who wait.
The Barooga A-grade side (7-194) broke its winning drought at home at the weekend, coming out on top of visitors Berrigan Saints (8-175) in round three Murray Valley Cricket Association action.
The young home side won the toss and elected to bat first.
Barooga coach-captain Brendan Lewis said it was a hard-fought win in the end.
“A lot of people picked Berrigan to beat us, so I sort of took that in as motivation to the young blokes and said, ‘look, if we play with confidence, there’s only a couple of teams within this comp that can beat us on the day’,” he said.
“That sort of sparked them a little bit.”
And spark them it did.
It was the third appearance — and his first half-century of the season — from English import Zach Dunn, who with 65 runs from 98 balls opened the margin between his side and the Saints.
“He’s a very good cricketer and teams are going to find that out now because he took some runs, and he’s got a bit of confidence,” Lewis said of Dunn.
Dunn had support from Jake Poole (33 from 39 deliveries), Jonathon Oliver (29 from 38) and Crue Lucas (37) as the Hawks notched up 7-194 from their 45 overs.
Oliver (2-21), James Hooper (2-30) and Lachlan Sutton (2-19 from nine overs with two maidens) did the damage with the ball for the home side.
Berrigan captain Jacob Bartlett cleaned up with no fewer than five wickets and two maidens from nine overs for the visitors, finishing with 5-18.
With the bat, Bartlett also cruised past a half century with 72 runs to take his side to 7-174 in reply.
But it was too little, too late for the Berrigan side.
With next week’s clash with Tocumwal in the calendar, Lewis said the side was taking it one week at a time.
“If we just worry about ourselves and our job, we’ll be fine. But we will definitely be looking to win our next two games, that’s for sure,” he said.
In B-grade, Barooga (10-43) fell to a rampant Cobram side (1-46) at Barooga.
Stephen Badrock (5-17) was the chief destroyer for the Tigers in the local derby.