BDCA: Dalyellup premiership captain Mitchell Boyle says grand final finish reflected his side’s belief

Dalyellup premiership captain Mitchell Boyle says his side’s remarkable Bunbury and Districts Cricket Association first-grade grand final victory was a reflection of their key theme for the game — belief. Boyle was at the centre of an unbelievable finish to the two-day season decider at Bunbury Recreation Ground, smashing two sixes from the final over to see his side over a target of 255 and to their first top-grade premeirship with one delivery to spare. He put on a match-winning 53-run stand in 32 balls with Liam Renton, who only joined him at the crease after the departure of centurion Bradman May, which left the eventual winners on 6-207 in the 45th over with the required run rate approaching nine per over. Boyle, who finished on 32 not out from 20 balls in the last innings, said he could not have imagined the finish in his wildest dreams. “As a kid, you dream about hitting a hundred in a grand final like Bradman did, but certainly not hitting two sixes to win it,” he said. “I think Rents and myself were both locked in to whatever came our way. We both believed, that was the word we used all weekend, it was to believe as a club, believe in our plans, believe anything could happen. “As a captain, I always believe. I know that sounds very cliche, but I always believed in our group, we did it in the T20’s and I knew we were good enough, we just had to get that mentality right that we could win the game and we were good enough. “We’ve worked extremely hard over the last two seasons to make it where we are now.” Dalyellup also contested last year’s grand final against the same opponent at their same venue but were well short of their best in an eventual 227-run loss. Boyle said his side had not used last year’s season decider for motivation in their build-up. “We let it go. It was in the back of my mind, but we didn’t really bring it up at all,” he said. “It was a new year, we had a bit of a different group this year, adding in Rents and Vinnie Poller, it made the group a little different. We came into the game with a different game plan.” May did not quite see his side to victory but his knock of 108 from 119 deliveries put an exclamation point on a remarkable 1150-run season where he made three centuries and 12 scores of 50 or more from his 21 innings. The wicketkeeper-batter managed only eight on the first day of the game but Boyle said he had no doubts his star would make amends in the second. “It’s hard to keep a good player down,” he said. “That was the thing going into Sunday, Bradman hadn’t really fired, none of our top order did really. If we could keep them to 200 and be chasing 250, (we knew) Bradman had had to fire at some stage.” Dalyellup also contested the second, fourth and fifth-grade grand finals on Saturday, with Boyle saying their depth had been a key force behind the breakthrough premiership. “Keeping the A-grade group as strong as we can falls down to our lower grades, which makes our lower grades a lot stronger as well,” he said.