Will Young, pictured here playing for the Black Caps, played a cup-retaining hand for Taranaki at Pukekura Park. Photo / Photosport
No excuses, no complaints, not even any what-ifs.
Hawke’s Bay captain Angus Schaw simply says Taranaki is a better side.
Hawke’s Bay’s hopes of regaining the Hawke Cup from Taranaki finished in disappointing fashion in New Plymouth on Sunday.
Having posted a very competitive 451 at Pukekura Park, Hawke’s Bay toiled for 157.3 largely unfruitful overs in which the hosts ground their way to 453/4. Black Cap Will Young finished 107 not out to retain the cup for his home province.
“Our approach was always be patient, things will happen, just don’t go searching,” Schaw said of Hawke’s Bay’s bowling effort.
“The wicket was obviously extremely good, but you get through session after session and you can’t really keep saying that when you’re only taking one wicket or zero wickets that session.
“We tried everything, the wicket just didn’t break up, it didn’t go up and down, it just got better and better. It didn’t offer anything and they were able to just sit on us.
“We didn’t bowl many bad balls, but they just didn’t get out. They didn’t nick it, we didn’t drop any catches, it was just one of those things.
“They’re a great team. They’ve been a great team for about 18 months. They’re the benchmark and they have been since they took the Hawke Cup off us.
“They know how to play the game, they know how to bat time and they all have a value on their wicket.”
No-one more so than Young, who was playing against a host of Central Districts teammates in the Hawke’s Bay side.
“It was his first 100 for Taranaki too,” said Schaw.
“He’d played 40-odd games for them and we were chipping him the whole time to make sure it was difficult for him, but he was bloody determined.
“The last 30-odd runs, when he stopped talking to people on the field, you could tell he was zoned in and I was thinking ‘oh s**t, we’re screwed here’.”
Schaw tried eight different bowlers in search of breakthroughs. He and fellow spinner Jayden Lennox bowled 62 overs between them, at barely a run an over. No matter how hard they toiled and no matter which pace bowler Hawke’s Bay injected for some shock value, the outcome was still the same.
“I don’t think we did anything wrong. We scored 450 on a very good wicket and they just absolutely have the recipe to hang onto the Hawke Cup, which is as it should be,” Schaw said.
“It’s going to take something special for someone to get it off them.”
The first four sessions had been hugely encouraging for Hawke’s Bay. Opener Thomas Zohrab laid the platform the team had been craving, which allowed strokemakers such as Sam Cassidy, Bayley Wiggins and Toby Findlay to push the innings forward.
If there’s been a criticism of Hawke’s Bay’s batting, it’s been a tendency to flirt at balls outside off stump and constantly need to feel bat on ball.
Zohrab grafted 144 balls for his 46, before Cassidy made 116, Wiggins 54 and Findlay a 75 eerily reminiscent of the 75 runs he got also batting at number nine in Rangiora, when Hawke’s Bay took the Hawke Cup off Canterbury Country two seasons ago.
Hopes were high that it would be the catalyst for another Hawke Cup triumph, but Taranaki’s resistance was too strong.
So ends a season in which Hawke’s Bay battled hard to win the Furlong Cup, performed creditably in a Hawke Cup challenge and perhaps didn’t do themselves justice in the Chapple Cup Twenty20 tournament.
“It’s a shame we didn’t win the Hawke Cup, but hopefully the guys can learn what it was like to go through 150 overs and take four wickets,” said Schaw.
“It was obviously disappointing at Chapple Cup. We rested on our laurels there a bit and I don’t think we did that in this challenge, we just weren’t good enough.”
Attention for some of the players now turns to club cricket. For others, such as Schaw, there will be 50-over cricket for Central Districts starting this week.
That means Schaw is highly unlikely to be in the Central Hawke’s Bay side that meets Cornwall at McLean Park on Sunday for the right to play Napier Technical Old Boys in the Murray McKearney Memorial Cup Twenty20 final.
In last Saturday’s men’s 50-over cricket, Tech beat Havelock North by 135 runs, Cornwall had a nine-wicket win over CHB and Taradale were seven-wicket winners against Napier Old Boys’ Marist.