Vic Country finish on a high

Fresh off inflicting New South Wales’ sole loss of the tournament, the hosts swept to a five-wicket victory over the ACT to instil some pride into an otherwise forgettable carnival.

Having been set 225 for victory, Victoria’s top-order did the damage as Eamonn Vines (42) and Brendan Scott (53) shared in a 104-run opening wicket partnership before Chris Bambury struck an unbeaten 71 to guide his side to victory with eight balls remaining.

“It is just a shame that we didn’t start the tournament the way we would have liked, but that’s cricket,” Victorian captain Brad Hauenstein told the Geelong Advertiser.

“It just shows we had a team that was good enough to win. We just didn’t take our chances early.”

Earlier in the day, Richard Tibbet (2-44) and Josh Vrbovski (1-11) struck with the new ball to decimate the ACT top order before the competition runners-up fought back.

Recovering from 3-5, the ACT put up a competitive total of 8-224 on the board, with Hauenstein again miserly taking 1-23 from his 10.

While Victoria made light work of the total, the win failed to lift them off the bottom of the ladder, with Hauenstein ruing what might have been.

“New South Wales only lost one match and that was against us and the ACT played really well for the whole tournament and we beat both of them,” he said.

“It was good to get those two scalps. If someone had said we would beat ACT and New South Wales in the last two you would have thought you would have won more earlier.”

Click here to see the full results from the 2011-12 Commonwealth Bank Australian Country Cricket Championships in Geelong.