CRICKET: Young team get grip on cup

The pain must be indescribable.
It'll still be there today and even tomorrow but player/coach Ian Sandbrook can live with that after batting for almost five hours, facing 217 balls for an unbeaten 56 that included only one boundary in their Hawke Cup challenge.
"Not too many of us will be turning up to work tomorrow, mate," a tired but jubilant Sandbrook told SportToday last night as they drove home from Nelson Park, Napier, to celebrate their victory at captain Luke Murray's home in Palmerston North.
"We've had a few champagnes and beers already in the changing room but we're going home to continue our celebrations."
How long will it take the Hawke's Bay team to soothe that mental pain?
Watch that space when Hawke's Bay Cricket thaw out from their cold war stance against SportToday over the Under-19 World Cup pork debacle.
Quicker than pigs can fly, the bragging rights for minor union supremacy was on the other side of the Manawatu Gorge last night after the holders held up the white flag soon after drinks.
Manawatu, who had comfortably secured first-innings victory on Sunday after the hosts won the toss on Saturday but enigmatically chose to shine the ball against their virgin whites, were mentally in their zone to occupy the crease yesterday on the final day of the three-day match.
The visitors couldn't have asked a better player than Sandbrook to set the foundation for their victory with his marathon innings, surviving the wrath of 2009-10 Central Districts Stags rookie fast bowler Jeremy Kuru who again showed his class with four wickets for 55 runs from 21 overs, including three maidens.
"It was pretty boring. Three days is a long time," said the only Manawatu player to have challenged and won the cup twice. He was in the winning team in 2001-02, beating Hamilton but losing it in their first defence to the Bay in 2002-03. Ironically, the Bay lost it in their first defence the following year too. Canterbury were in the same boat last season.
"I was talking to [Bay coach] Dale [Smidt] after the game about how in the last 10 years or so the cup changes hands a lot of times.
"Part of it is because the first class players don't play much any more. In the old days we got them [first class] back more often so we held on to the cup for a bit longer," Sandbrook explained, mindful they will be the ones on the Wanted posters in cricket's wild west.
"It'll be new challenges. No one's different, mate, and we'll be trying to hold on to the cup," he said as they prepare to face a rampant Bay of Plenty at Fitzherbert Park, in Palmy North. BOP on Sunday crushed a hapless Poverty Bay in just over a day to earn the right to challenge.
Manawatu are not totally in the dark about their first-up challengers, having played a warm-up match against them at Labour Day weekend last year.
"It's all good and we're under no illusions about how difficult it'll all be from here."
The enormity of becoming cup holders was something his young troops were trying to get their heads around.
"It's a great result for a young team but they are still trying to come to terms with it a little bit."
Yesterday morning showers delayed the game and would have doused any fleeting flames of a miraculous salvage operation the Bay cricketers might have harboured overnight.
Was it a help or did it prolong their agony of getting their mitts on the silverware?
"It was a help but it was also a distraction because we lost three or four quick wickets in that spell.
"It didn't help that we sort of felt the cup was already in the bag," Sandbrook explained.
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