A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
CRICKET
Just keeping you on your toes.
That’s what the shorter form of cricket does, as in Round 9 of the Walker Shield T15 Blast at the Harry Barker Reserve from 5.45pm tonight.
The Smash Palace Bail-Breakers lead the four-team league (six wins, 24 competition points), followed by the Eastland Broncos (16pts), the Bollywood Stars (12) and the Auto Tyre Eagles (4).
Glen Udall’s Stars take on the Matt Crampton-led Eagles on HB1, while for the Broncos under Craig Christophers it will be crucial that short square boundary of HB2 isn’t peppered by the Bail-Breakers.
Breakers captain Jak Rowe knows that in big left-handed opening batsman Nic Hendrie he has the ability to dictate terms from the start or chase any total with confidence.
Hendrie’s numbers are remarkable: 359 runs from 213 balls with 17 sixes, 27 fours, one innings of 111 not out, two 50s, an average of 89 and strike-rate of 168 as the Walker Shield’s No.1 batsman.
The ace bowler is the Broncos’ Graham Hudson, with 10 wickets at seven runs apiece, conceding only five runs an over on average with a best return of 3-9.
Parminder Kulaar of the Bail-Breakers has held six catches heading into this last week of round-robin play before 1 v 2, 3 v 4 (“sudden death”) on March 1. The winners of 1 v 2 advance to the grand final, the losers of 1 v 2 must play the winners of 3 v 4 on March 8 with the grand final set for Friday, March 15.
“We’ve got a good bunch of guys who do what we need done at the time,” said Rowe of his Bail-Breakers.
“Josiah Turner does that with bat and ball, Jacob Colbert with the ball, and last week Jacob showed that he could strike the ball, too.”
In Round 8 against the Eagles, Turner (2-10) and Colbert (1-15) were both influential but veteran Jimmy Holden was excellent value with 3-12.
Broncos skipper Christophers has brought a good leg-spinner, Jonathan Purcell, and old head Jason Drain in for university students Robbie Tallott and Ben Bristow. Tom Needham and Blake Marshall are also unavailable. OBR’s Arun Kurup has joined the squad.
Christophers is concrete on one thing but is keeping all options open on others: “We need to take early wickets — especially that of Nic Hendrie.
“We’ll check conditions but have chased well in our last two games, so may look to bowl first.”
Should the biggest wicket in the comp fall early in the piece, the clash on HB2 will be blown wide open. Of the spin bowlers on show in the Blast tonight, OBR captain Purcell is the most experienced and is always interesting to watch.
The Stars are a settled unit.
“We’re looking to finish round-robin play with a performance we can be happy with,” said captain Udall.
“We’ve had mixed results in this comp but it’d be good for our confidence levels to finish the round robin with a win.”
The Stars have brought Matthew Cook in to replace in-form seamer Marshall Norris, who took 5-33 in High School Old Boys’ DJ Barry Cup demolition of OBR for 66 last Saturday. Cook is a solid performer, accurate and consistent in line and length.
Eagles skipper Matt Crampton and paceman Thomas Keogh are both left-arm bowlers — the first an orthodox spinner — and both are left-handed batsmen. Small points of difference can make a difference for the league’s fourth-placed team if they play well enough; Crampton varies his pace well, and for opposition batsmen Keogh’s relatively low bowling arm at release can make the ball hard to pick.
The Eagles must hold every catch on offer in the field and their batsmen must latch on to short-pitched bowling, or when offered width. They can win if they bat well enough — as they have done only once so far this season. And so they need at least two batsmen to step up tonight.