The front-runners all season, the Stars claimed the Reading Cup at their first attempt with a 21-run victory against Tamba Industrial at Kitchener Park.

Despite the triumph, skipper Mitch Swain assessed Sign Print Stitch’s performance with both bat and ball as very ordinary.

Swain made 23 in a 13-minute cameo to follow Jamie Mitchell’s 24 and Troy Sands’ 25 at the top of the order.

But there wasn’t much of an output after that until Damien Baldwin (16no) and Andrew Swain (26no).

Not for the first time the duo dug them out of trouble as they scrambled to 6-127.

“We were pretty lucky Andrew Swain got about 15 off the last over and got us to 127,” Swain said.

“120 in a T20 final is always good enough if you bowl well.”

That said, Swain was disappointed one of the top order, himself included, didn’t go on and make 50 or 60.

Some of the credit for that needs to go to Tamba. They bowled really well, Swain said, skipper Blake Small leading the way with a very tidy 3-14.

Farran Lamb also gave little away going for only 12 from his four overs.

He was then one of their best performers with the bat hitting 15, and sharing a 45-run partnership with top-scorer Ben Haire (39) for the second wicket.

Sam Lumby also made 13 and Dave Silver 16 off 13 in Tamba Industrial’s reply of 5-106, which included 23 extras, 20 of them courtesy of wides, from the Stars.

“We were very ordinary with the ball,” Swain said.

“We just bowled enough wicket balls.”

He thought Tamba probably left their run a bit late too.

“They probably didn’t go hard enough earlier enough,” he said.

“When we saw that Dave Silver was not coming out to open we saw an opportunity to dot up at the start.

“We had the bowling to do that.”

Still it wasn’t probably until the last four/five overs that he really started to feel confident.

Picked as a spearhead, Sands delivered with 0-10 from his four.

The skipper also chipped in with 3-18, while Andrew Swain capped off a strong allround performance with 1-14.

“It’s been a great season. I’ve really enjoyed it,” Mitch Swain said.

Sign Print Stitch only dropped the one game - to Tamba in the final round.

Swain felt the loss did fire them up a bit, although they were already safely through to the final by then..