Cricket: 7-12 from six overs but Napier a tad shy

Seth Taylor (right) celebrates another wicket with teammates Logan Gee (left) and Daniel Adkins.

When Seth Taylor ran out to play his first age-group representative cricket match on Sunday he set a target of three wickets.

"I was really happy with three wickets after two overs," says Taylor whose Napier Year 7 captain Liam McCarthy threw him the ball when Hastings were sitting on 20-odd for no wickets at Nelson Park, Napier.

His fellow Napier bowlers went through the containment phase of the 40-over game on the No2 wicket before the captain, with instruction from coach Clayton Elmes, got Taylor back to the bowling crease.

"I thought three wickets were good enough for the day and then the wickets started coming in and I thought, 'wow'," says the 12-year-old who finished with the admirable figures of 7-12 from six overs.

It was pretty much a wicket an over, bar one over when he got two, as Hastings finished with what appeared to be a gettable 108 all out in 33 overs. He sat on a hattrick twice.

In reply, though, Hastings tightened the screws on the opposition, skittling them for 80 in 30 overs for an 28-run victory.

Elmes says the Taradale Intermediate pupil claimed two leg-before-wicket scalps, two caught and clean-bowled three Hastings batsmen.

"Seth was very well supported by the fielders," he says, adding George Bergman took a blinding low catch for one dismissal.

Elmes says Complete Flooring Napier Technical Old Boys and Pay Excellence Hawke's Bay senior men's representative allrounder Indika Senarathne, of Sri Lanka, had helped him with training last Friday.

"Indy had made two changes to Seth's bowling action," says the coach, adding Taylor had noticed the difference in his school's first XI game against Hereworth School counterparts to reinforce his belief in the tweaks.

Says Taylor: "I was really surprised because I didn't think I'd get that many wickets."

He intends to mount the ball Elmes let him have for claiming five wickets and will engrave his statistics on it.

He is disappointed Napier lost but reconciles that with the fact that he and his teammates were playing together as a team for the first time.

"We could have batted better but they had good bowlers who were accurate."

Not surprisingly Taylor's appetite for the summer code has grown. "Hastings won the shield but I'm proud of my effort and I definitely hope to play at a higher level."

Hastings also prevailed by seven wickets in the battle of the Year 8s on the adjacent pitch 3 while Napier Year 6s scraped home by 11 runs.

The juniors rep games is Hawke's Bay Cricket's reintroduction of the Hastings v Napier primary schools' matches for the Cricket Challenge Cup last played for in 1995-96.

Before Sunday, Hastings won the cup 18 times and Napier 14.

The senior men were also scheduled to play on Sunday as part of the Bay trials to pick a team for the Hawke Cup match but the game was postponed because of unavailability of players.

HBCA director of coaching Dale Smidt says the plan is to include under-15 and under-17 teams. "We have quite a bit of scope here," says Smidt, revealing the Year 6s and 7s played for the first time in that age group since 1996.