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CRICKET -
Imagine playing two finals on the grand stage in a 72-hour period.
That’s what lies in store for the nine-a-side Bollywood High School Old Boys Pups and the Tairawhiti Women’s Cricket Club Hortigro Colts today in T15 action and on Saturday in the T30 league.
The Hamish Swann-led Pups and Grace Levy’s TWCC Colts will do battle on the Representative Wicket at the Harry Barker Reserve from 4.30pm today and 8.30am on Saturday.
Last weekend saw the Pups get three significant scores out of three batsmen on the rep wicket — powerful left-hander Jarrod Ormiston (37, batting at No.8), all-rounder Rhys Grogan (an unbeaten 34 from No.7) and talented second drop Phoenix Pardoe-Crosby (27 retired) — in a total of 193.
Though the Pups (put in to bat by Stars captain Kelan Bryant) did lose 12 wickets, they bowled the Stars out for 135 in 18.1 overs and so won by 58 runs. Markus Gray (4-37 off five overs) and Vincent Patrick-Page (3-19 off four) bowled superbly for the Stars in the first innings, as did the Pups’ Grogan (5-13 off five) and John Broad (2-18) in the second innings.
Grogan has been in top form since returning from the Northern Districts boys’ primary tournament in Cambridge — four of his five wickets were bowled, including two of the best players in the grade, second drop Bryant (24) and opening bat David Gray (22).
“The whole team played well — Year 7s Taye McGuinness (11) and Malsha Mahabalage (12) did an awesome job of opening the batting and we look forward to the finals against the girls,” said Swann. “We’d like also to thank Ryan Majstrovic for being at Nelson Park and the Harry Barker Reserve every week to help run things, and the High School Old Boys senior teams for coming down to watch us play.”
The TWCC Colts lost eight wickets in their nine-a-side clash with the Ngatapa Knights, but Ngatapa lost 12 wickets — four in the grace period (batsmen cannot be out in the first six balls they face, out of a maximum 30; rather, they swap ends and the opposition are credited with five runs for the dismissal) — and so TWCC won, with 179-8 in 30 overs topping 177-8 off 27.4 overs.
Knights captain George Gillies won the toss and chose to bowl on the Practice Block. TWCC skipper opener Grace Levy then led her team’s scorers with 35 off 52 balls, retired, from number two, Northern Spirit A’s Kayley Knight making an unbeaten 34 from number nine. Left-armer Jonothan Gray (1-14 off five overs), his fellow seamers Aiden Armstrong (1-5 off two overs) and Taylor Rouse (1-8 off three overs) were the Knights’ best with the ball. In the chase which followed, Ngatapa No.2 Armstrong was in pulverising form. He hit nine boundaries in his 39 off 30 balls. First drop Dylan Torrie also went hard from the start with 47 from 46; Gillies, with 20 off 17 coming in at seven, gave the Knights a third batsman striking over 100. Such scoring gave them a real chance of victory, but they also had four batsmen dismissed twice and one three times: CricHQ’s online scoring does not record the details of these.
“We played much better against TWCC this time around than we did first-up.
“Aiden was our Most Valuable Player with his 39; Dylan retired — came back in — and was our steady hand,” said Gillies. “Both Graces — Grace Levy and Grace Kuil (4-35 off 4.4 overs) — were standouts for the girls. We lost a super-exciting game by two runs.”
Wickets in hand — or wickets retained — also proved crucial in the DNature Dragons five-run win against the David File Decorators Old Boys Rugby Sharks. The clash on HBR3 saw Sharks captain Braden Sycamore win the toss choosing then to bat first. OBR reached 130-8 in 29.2 overs — a solid effort. Both the captain at No.3 and No.4 Dylan Worsnop made 21, with Akira Makiri (the Dragons MVP for 2019-2020) taking 2-20off five overs in a spell of quality swing bowling. In an action-packed second innings, three Sharks — seamers Worsnop (3-13 off three overs), Joel Kirkpatrick (3-25 off four overs) and left-arm wrist-spinner Kavinda Vithanage (3-6 off 3.3 overs) — took three fours: an unusual occurrence.
Dragons opener Bekko Page — a most promising all-round cricketer — then played a match-winning innings. His 30 off 25 balls included a six and four 4s. His skipper Alex Shanks — so often the backbone of his team’s batting this season — made 19 at first drop and another young player with great potential, Nathaniel Fearnley, struck 17 coming in at seven.
It was a nailbiter, won by Shanks’ crew in 23.3 overs, with their 135-11.
Shanks said: “It was a great last game — we had fun. OBR came back well with good bowling and it was neat too to see the improvement in our players — and the opposition — over the season.”