With one flurry of Ash White's bat to the Wolseley Park fence nerves turned to joy for Gunnedah captain Blake Small.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
White's boundary off the final ball of the 25th over of their Connolly Cup clash with Tamworth secured a four-wicket win, and cemented top spot in the Namoi Conference ahead of next month's semi-finals with one round still to play.
Small had spoken heading to the game about the importance of finishing on top after learning that lesson last year.
READ ALSO:
"With the rain that's coming around at the moment you don't really know what to expect," he said.
"Myself and the boys were very down last year after getting knocked out due to weather."
Much like this season, he believes they had the side to win it.
The bowlers set it up on Sunday, routing Tamworth for just 71.
"It was a brilliant bowling effort," Small said.
"The way I set it up was to have Briggsy (Garry Briggs) and Sandsy (Troy Sands) open the bowling and then Farran (Lamb) to come in.
"For the front-runners to get five wickets and then Farran to come in and finish it off, just everything went to plan."
Lamb and Briggs both finished with four wickets while Simon Norvill was Tamworth's top-scorer with 16 at the top of the order.
They then had a bit of an early wobble in their run chase. They were looking in a bit of trouble at 4-12 but Oscar King (35) and Lamb (14) dug in and steadied things.
"Cricket's a funny game, it's never over until you actually get those runs," Small said.
"I was nervous pretty much the whole time until we got those runs."
He praised the way that King responded to the "criticism" that was thrown his way out on the field and let his bat do the talking.
"The way Oscar batted today was unreal," he said.
"It was very vocal out there and for him to actually just go on with it, to win the game and score 35 runs, to me that's a win for him."
Brad Redshaw (2-16) and Jaryd Stevens (2-19) did the early damage for Tamworth.
Small said it was a "huge" result for them, especially with the side that Tamworth fielded.
"It's always good to beat Tamworth," he said.
"It's not many times we've done it over the years."
The win made it four-from-four and also knocked Tamworth out of contention, which made it that extra bit sweeter.
"I think the last time we did that we went on to win the comp, and at the same time First XI knocked them out that year too," Small said.
Their attention now turns to Narrabri Gold later this month.