Cricket: Hamilton grind down Hawke's Bay to defend Hawke Cup

Left-arm spinner Jayden Lennox was not only the top wicket taker but also the top runs scorer as the Hawke's Bay cricketers forgot their willows at home in the Hawke Cup challenge match. Photo / file

You could put a spin or two on it but it's fair to say Jayden Lennox isn't going to drift this delivery from his fingers any time soon.

That's because left-arm orthodox spinner Lennox agrees the writing was on the wall for the Pay Excellence-sponsored Hawke's Bay senior men representatives before stumps on day one (Friday) of the three-day Hawk Cup challenge match in Hamilton.

"We were pretty comprehensively beaten, to be honest," he said after Hamilton defended the symbol of New Zealand minor association cricket supremacy with a first-innings win on Sunday.

The teams shook hands not long after noon on day three with the Jacob Smith-skippered Bay having eventually claimed the cup holder's 10 wickets but haemorrhaged 452 runs from more than 1000 deliveries. The challengers didn't bother to pad up again for the second innings.

The Dave Castles-coached Bay men had won the toss before Hamilton skittled them for a paltry 166 in 64.1 overs. Nine wickets had tumbled at the 46.4-over mark for 121 runs.

Lennox — top scoring with an unbeaten 37 from 67 balls at No 10 — had combined with No 11 Ben Stoyanoff (18 runs) to boost a token total that would have required a colossal batting collapse from Hamilton to give the challengers a sniff.

Frankly the Bay were reduced to dog tucker and learned a humbling lesson in red-ball cricket on what happens when your staple diet is in white-ball fare.

"We were kind of playing as if it were a one-day or two-day game [where] we didn't set ourselves up too well," said Lennox, revealing Hamilton had eclipsed them in all departments — batting, bowling and fielding.

James Baker took 4-56 while fellow opener Michael Dodunski snared 2-35 while Matt Wallbank, at first change, claimed 3-38.

Jayden Lennox bowls as captain Jacob Smith fields but the former says it's imperative to adopt a three-day mind set when playing two-day Furlong Cup qualifiers in future. Photo / file

Bay opening batsmen Bayley Wiggins and Smith scored 19 runs each and stayer Matt Edmondson, at No 4, was out for a three-ball duck after losing his furniture to Baker.

Central Districts Stag Bradley Schmulian could manage only seven runs before feathering a Wallbank delivery to Black Caps test wicketkeeper BJ Watling.

Now juxtapose that with Hamilton opener Elliot Santner showing brother Mitchell how it is done with 157 runs from 386 balls, including 16 boundaries and three sixes.

The exhibits from No 4 Watling scoring 58 runs (103 deliveries) and No 7/captain Keir Bettley 34 (120) had put the Bay players in the witness box of self-cross examination as they were left slaving in the park for a shade more than 10 hours.

With lethargy inevitably creeping in, every time the bowlers drifted off their line and length the Hamiltonians put them to the sword.

Lennox took 4-84 from a staggering 50 overs, including 23 maidens, with fellow tweaker Angus Schaw chiming in with 3-98 from 19 overs, including eight maidens. Smith, rotating eight bowlers, backed up with 3-49 from 11 overs.

The Bay accumulated 37 maidens from Hamilton which had reflected the defenders' patience and guile as much as their respect for certain bowlers.

As it turned out, Watling was the least of Bay's worries.

Lennox said Hamilton batsmen didn't have to go after the Bay bowling attack but waited for fatigue to kick in before punishing wayward deliveries.

"They just powered on the runs when we were tired on the field," he said, alluding to how the opposition had done that to them when they had taken the Hawke Cup off the Bay in the first defence here last year.

"They just showed more maturity and batted for a long, long time to not worry about the score but how much time they were spending on the crease to eat up the time."

Lennox said while the Bay were adept at scoring runs quickly they needed to adapt to treating every ball as an event. That meant eking out more outright victories in their zone 2, Furlong Cup qualifying rounds each summer to determine who would represent the CD catchment area.

"At the moment we're getting outright results by playing quite aggressive cricket so it becomes quite hard to adapt to that when you add another whole day's play," he said, not seeing the Furlong Cup mutating to three-dayers but believing players could adopt that sort of mind set over that duration.

While Galloway Park has come under scrutiny for its wicket and long outfield, Lennox didn't want that to be an excuse for under achieving.

"The outfield wasn't great so it was like we were playing on a rugby field but we can't complain when they've put on 452 runs so, at the end of the day, we just didn't score enough runs and they just walked all over us," he said.

No doubt, the Bay were disappointed to have put in the hard yards in the CD qualifiers but not "front up" in Hamilton.

Overall, Lennox said they had enjoyed competing against the better sides in the country and there was always the next summer to do it all again.