ALL BLACK AND CRICKETER: Jimmy Mill, halfback in the 1924 Invincibles All Black rugby team, was a member of the Poverty Bay cricket team who won the Hawke Cup in 1919.
CRICKET
TODAY is the centenary of the greatest day in the history of Poverty Bay cricket when the rep side won the Ranfurly Shield of the sport.
Poverty Bay went to the famous Cooks Gardens in Wanganui and defeated the Hawke Cup holders by three wickets on March 28, 1919.
A civic reception awaited the team when they arrived back with the symbol of minor association cricket supremacy on April 1 after sailing home on the Arahura.
The victory over Wanganui was an amazing turnaround considering the Bay’s previous challenge, also against Wanganui, in April 1914, ended in a 201-run massacre of Poverty Bay.
Bay captain Joe Oates, the only Poverty Bay survivor from 1914, won the toss and asked the holders to bat first in the two-day match.
The captain’s brother Willie Oates took 4-21 as Wanganui were dismissed for 104.
The challengers replied with 127, with contributions from William Blair (19), Stanley Reeves (27) and Turiki Pere (24), while No.11 batsman A Coombe, the star of the match, made an unbeaten 20.
Wanganui gave themselves a fighting chance of retaining the Hawke Cup with a second innings of 139, giving them a lead of 116.
Oates again featured with the ball, taking 4-41, while W Atkinson and Coombe ended the match with five wickets each.
Poverty Bay recovered from the precarious position of 60-5 with Reeves and Coombe ‘‘batting powerfully”, according to The Poverty Bay Herald.
The challengers won by getting through to 118-7.
Blair backed up his first-innings 19 with 21, while Reeves made an unbeaten 36 in addition to his first-innings 27.
Coombe, promoted to No.9, played another vital innings, making 25.
At the civic reception Deputy Mayor H. E. Hill said the victory showed the district could ‘‘hold its own’’ with any other on the sports field.
He hoped the Hawke Cup would stay in Gisborne for several years so that the team could “prove to the public the justice of their claim for new and adequate cricket and sports grounds’’.
PB successfully defended the Hawke Cup four timesPoverty Bay were to successfully defend the Hawke Cup four times.
In the following 1919-20 season Wanganui were defeated by seven wickets and Wairapapa were thrashed by an innings and 38 runs
Both matches were played at the Oval, while Manawatu were beaten by eight wickets in a defence played at Childers Road Reserve.
In the 1920-1921 season, Wanganui were beaten by two wickets at the Oval.
But six weeks later Poverty Bay, with a 51-run first-innings lead over Wairapapa, collapsed to be all out for 56.
But the Hawke Cup was not to be surrendered meekly. The challengers scraped through to 109-8 with first-drop Ces Dacre, a veteran of 268 first class matches in England and New Zealand, making a vital and unbeaten 61.
Three players are recorded on the Poverty Bay Cricket Association honours board in the Harry Barker Reserve pavilion for their Hawke Cup exploits.
They are William Schollum, 6-23 v Wairapapa and 8-39 v Manawatu, both in the 1919-1920 season; Duncan McLachlan, 6-61 in the same match against Manawatu; and Len McMahon, who took 8-79 in the unsuccessful 1913-1914 challenge against Wanganui and 6-61 in the 1920-1921 defence against Wanganui.
McMahon, a former New South Wales juniors captain who played one Plunket Shield match for Auckland, was a prolific run-scorer in club cricket for Wanderers and the star player of the era in Poverty Bay.
In 1913-14, McMahon made 82 not out to take Poverty Bay to a one-wicket victory over Hawke’s Bay and captained Poverty Bay in the two-day match against the touring Australians when he made 87 not out in 128 minutes in his side’s first innings of 155.
McMahon was chosen to play in the second test against Australia after critics called for more players from outside the main centres to be selected.
In his only test, McMahon top-scored with 68.
The best-known Poverty Bay player today from that successful 1919 challenge is undoubtedly All Black great Jimmy Mill, who become a household name as halfback for the 1924 Invincibles.
He also played rugby for East Coast, Poverty Bay and Wairarapa.
Alongside Chris Laidlaw, Sid Going and Dave Loveridge, Mill is ranked among the greatest of All Black halfbacks.
Mill played as an opening batsman against Wanganui and was run out for 7 and caught for 7.
He also played in the successful defence against Wairarapa on February 23 and 24, 1920, where he batted at No. 7 and was run out for 10.
It appears that William Blair, who played for New Zealand Minor Associations against the 1920-1921 Australians, was the last surviving member of the side who took the Hawke Cup off Wanganui a century ago.
He died in Gisborne on March 29, 1978, aged 81.
Poverty Bay have not won the Hawke Cup again.
Today Hamilton hold the trophy, after taking it off Hawke’s Bay this month.