Peter Siddle’s first match as captain of Victoria ended in a draw against Western Australia - and the Nottinghamshire bound paceman declared himself ‘very proud’ of the performance of his team.
The Bushrangers made all the running during the four days at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, only to eventually fall two wickets short of victory.
Siddle, who was released by Australia to play in the fixture after missing out on selection for the second Test against New Zealand, was firm in his belief that Western Australia’s performance had lacked ambition.
"When you've played four hard days of cricket and you're the only team playing out there, it does make it hard," he said.
"You come here to play against an opposition and you're pretty much playing a match by yourself. That's the disappointing thing.
"We scored over four an over in both innings. I think that explains everything about the way we're going about our cricket at the moment and the way the opposition is.
"They can play how they want to play. We don't mind the way we play. We'll keep playing like that.
"They didn't have a crack at all for four days. It was up to us to run the game; the whole match.
"We gave them a couple of generous declarations. We gave them plenty of opportunities and they didn't take any of them.
"To get those last few wickets was a great effort by the boys. But there's a lot of disappointment in a lot of ways."
Glenn Maxwell’s 98 was the star turn of Victoria’s 423-7 declared after Siddle, deputising a skipper for the injured Matthew Wade, won the toss and elected to bat.
Siddle (1-38) and his fellow seamers them played a supporting role to leg-spinner Fawad Ahmed, whose five wicket haul limited Justin Langer’s Redbacks to 272 all out in reply.
Siddle’s second declaration of the match, this time at 238-7, set the visitors 390 to win from 106 overs.
Siddle went wicketless while Ahmed and James Pattinson took three wickets apiece to keep Victoria in with a shout of victory throughout.
However, the game was eventually saved as English born wicketkeeper Sam Whiteman posted an unbeaten half-century, following-up a maiden career century at the top of the order from 22-year-old opener William Bosisto.
Siddle, who recently signed a two year deal to be Nottinghamshire’s overseas player for the 2016 and 2017 seasons, praised the performance of his team in pursuit of an unlikely victory on a benign surface.
"I'm very proud of how the boys went about it," he said.
"The way we played this game; to set up a base, to be aggressive to get us to a total quickly so we could declare on the second day, bowl the way we did, then attack again with the bat to give us that declaration and give us that chance to get it done, credit goes to everyone out there.
"They toiled hard, we stayed out there and toiled until the very last minute and the very last ball to see how we would go.
"I think to get 18 wickets on a very tough wicket probably speaks for itself. It's a great effort."
The 2015 season has seen dramatic last-gasp four day victories, thrilling limited-overs contests and an historic Investec Ashes Test, all in the unique surroundings of Trent Bridge.
Next season, we’d wager, will be no less enthralling and frankly we’d hate for you to miss out.