Flora Devonshire on the front foot for Hawke's Bay in her game-winning 77 not out. Photo / HBCA
It was a pretty content Hawke’s Bay women’s team, after comprehensively beating Wairarapa by seven wickets to start their Copelin Cup campaign.
The hosts bowled Wairarapa out for 159, then got to their target with 5.2 overs to spare.
Wairarapa won the competition last summer and, by their own admission, Hawke’s Bay can sometimes by slow starters. That was something everyone was conscious of at Nelson Park on Sunday.
“When you get to the end of the season you don’t want to look back and go ‘oh, we should’ve won that game back then’,” Hawke’s Bay offspinner Niamh Muldowney said.
Muldowney was one of three Hawke’s Bay bowlers to take three wickets in Wairarapa’s innings, along with Flora Devonshire and Aniela Apperley. The big one was Wairarapa opener Georgia Atkinson, who Devonshire trapped lbw for 70.
“If she’d kicked on, the game could have been a different story,” Devonshire said.
Instead, a target of 160 in 40 overs was well within Hawke’s Bay’s grasp, especially with Devonshire in such fine touch. The White Ferns allrounder finished 77 not out and impressed with her clean hitting down the ground.
“It was a great game and it’s good to get that win under our belt,” Devonshire said.
She shared an unbroken stand of 95 for the fourth wicket with Apperley (30 not out) to ensure Hawke’s Bay made the perfect start to their season.
Batting depth is a strength of the side, but Devonshire and Apperley weren’t keen for that to be tested.
“We’d done the hard work and we talk about wanting to pull the stump out at the end of the game and being the ones to take it through to the end and not leaving it to the next person,” Devonshire said.
“No, it was good and I thought Aniela batted really well and kept me present.”
A hand injury forced the 22-year-old Devonshire out of the New Zealand team for the recent ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup and, while playing for Hawke’s Bay isn’t necessarily the pinnacle of her career, it’s where her heart lies.
“I love playing for Hawke’s Bay. It’s my favourite team to play for,” she said.
Muldowney and Devonshire both said there’s a huge pride that comes from representing your home province, as well as a responsibility to maintain the collegial environment created by the team’s former coach Craig Ross.
Given the team is a mixture of fulltime and part-time players, schoolgirls and experienced campaigners, culture is critical to success.
“At training we all muck in and work together and it’s cool to teach them what I know because when I was their age I had a couple of people doing the same for me,” Devonshire said.
Hawke’s Bay was second in last summer’s Copelin Cup and Muldowney said she expects the competition to be fierce this time around.
That was evidenced by Sunday’s other opening round clash in New Plymouth between Taranaki and Manawatu, which was won by the visitors with one wicket and one ball to spare.
Hawke’s Bay’s next match is against Taranaki at Nelson Park on November 22.
A bit was expected of Taradale this summer.
And, if last season’s Hawke’s Bay premier men’s club cricket season showed us anything, it’s that Taradale can come good in the end.
But they’ve made a winless start to this campaign and seem destined to concede a first-innings deficit to Central Hawke’s Bay, in the latest round of two-day matches.
Taradale played periods of good cricket while some individuals, notably opening batter Jacob Cotter and allrounder Sachin Jayawardena, excelled. It’s just that none of it has quite added up to create collective success.
Taradale bowled CHB out for 173 at Taradale Park on Saturday, then went to stumps at 147-8 in reply.
“It was a good toss to lose for us,” Jayawardena said.
“Bowling them out for 173 was good for us, considering their batting lineup, and then I thought we were batting well until we lost those four wickets in the final 45 minutes of play, so I’d say the game is in the balance now.
“The first session next weekend will be exciting.”
Jayawardena, the club’s overseas professional, appeared to hit the ball he was given out lbw to from Danial Ibrahim, before Cotter (75) and Nihal Shilar (31) were among offspinner Toby Richardson’s three victims.
Jayawardena concedes Taradale’s 101-run loss to CHB on the first Saturday of the season wasn’t particularly impressive. But he believes there’s been a steady improvement in the performances since without “putting the finishing touch on it”.
A former Sri Lanka under-19 player, Jayawardena is a pretty good judge of talent and certainly likes what he’s seeing from Cotter.
“He’s a very promising talent. He’s only 19 now, which is really young to be scoring this amount of runs,” said Jayawardena.
“Jacob, we haven’t really seen him bowl much for Taradale, but he is very handy with the ball and then as a fielder he is excellent in a number of positions. I would say he is an accomplished allround cricketer and, with the bat, his shot selection is spot on.
“I’ve seen a lot of cricketers and I’ve played first-class cricket and I rate him very highly.”
Another player impressing plenty of people across the competition is Cornwall swing bowler Jed Greville. He took 6-19, as Napier Old Boys’ Marist were bowled out for 76 after electing to bat at Nelson Park.
A stylish hundred from Koji Hardgrave-Abe enabled Cornwall to post 270-7 declared, before Marist went to stumps at 88-2 in its second innings.
“We were pretty happy when Marist batted first and we got a green top to bowl on,” Greville said.
“Definitely in that first innings we bowled as a unit quite well. I reaped the rewards, but everyone chipped in, hit good areas and the ball was doing a lot early.”
Greville’s energy and consistency are standout features of his bowling. He knows what his best ball is and bowls it as relentlessly as possible.
“As a bowling unit, we know that as long as I stay patient someone’s going to reap the rewards if we work together,” he said.
Hardgrave-Abe certainly reaped a few batting rewards from Marist bowling half-trackers, which he gleefully hit to and over the legside boundary.
“He’s bloody talented and today proved it. He’s been getting 20s and 30s all season and looking unreal and today he grinded through, which was cool to see,” Greville said.
Another player whose talent is not in question is Napier Technical Old Boys opener Harrison Woolley. For the second week in succession he made 95, to help put Tech in a strong position.
Todd Watson’s 6-24 helped Tech bowl Havelock North for 115, then Woolley, player-coach Christian Leopard (69) and captain Watson (42) made hard-hitting contributions to enable Tech to declare its first innings at 309-5.
Havelock held back star batters Taylor Bettelheim and Joey Field for the 20 minutes before stumps and went to the close of play at 5-1.
Once again, talk inevitably turned to Woolley again falling agonisingly short of his maiden century at this level.
“Haz is just a team man. He knows his role is to play his natural game and if the ball’s in his area he hits it. He does such a good job of it and he’s maybe not sure what to do with his game when he gets to that point where he’s a bit tired,” Leopard said.
“Once he gets one, he’ll get 10 and he’ll learn how to get them. He’s not far away obviously, not far away at all. He’s one shot away most weeks, he’s batting really well and even if he keeps getting 90s they’re really valuable for the team.
“Club bowlers can be very tough at times because of their natural slow pace. They tend to hit the seam a lot more and if you let them bowl at you they can keep you stuck on the crease a lot, so Haz does the opposite and doesn’t let them bowl and they end up having to change their plans.
“It’s the perfect way to go about it if you’re confident enough.”
Leopard is in his first season of the dual playing and coaching role, and said it was an interesting experience trying to straddle the line between authority figure and mate.
“My role is more organising trainings and making sure the training is specific to what we’re doing on the weekend and making sure there’s plenty of variety so that it’s fun. That’s the main aspect,” he said.
“We want trainings to be fun and make sure guys are looking forward to it.”
To emphasise how they hang on their new coach’s every word, Tech’s players pulled up chairs and gathered round to listen to Leopard being interviewed.
- This article is provided courtesy of Hawke’s Bay Cricket Association