The Kamo High School cricket team smile after moving into the next round in a bid to represent Northern Districts on the national stage. Photo / Supplied
The Kamo High School cricket team smile after moving into the next round in a bid to represent Northern Districts on the national stage. Photo / Supplied
Cricket teams from Kamo High School and Whangārei Girls' High School have seen success in the qualifying rounds of the national secondary school cricket competition, the Gillette Cup.
On Monday, the Kamo High School team travelled to Auckland to compete in the annual Northern Districts Super Smash T20 tournament. Afterwinning both games against teams from Morrinsville College and Hamilton's St John's College, Kamo qualified for the main finals of the tournament to be played in Rotorua on March 25-28.
This was the first time the team from Kamo had made it this far and will join seven other schools for the finals. Played in two pools, each pool of four teams will play each other for the first three days and on the final day, there will be crossover matches with the top team in each pool playing in the grand final, with the winner going on to represent Northern Districts at the national finals at Lincoln in December.
After some great performances and excellent batting from WGHS player Makayla Templeton, the team was unable to progress to the main finals of the women's competition after they finished third.
The girls' team competed in Gillette Venus Cup Secondary Schools T20 tournament in Papamoa from Sunday until Tuesday. After losing their first game to Waikato Diocesan School for Girls by nine wickets, WGHS came back strong beating schools from Gisborne and Cambridge before losing their final game to a Tauranga school.
Whangārei Girls' High School run machine Makayla Templeton is resolute in defence. Photo / Supplied
Templeton was the star of the campaign, making scores of 54, 75, 92 and 142. Despite those performances, WGHS finished third with only the top two teams moving on to the finals.
Kamo High School's history-making effort was made possible by some great performances in all aspects of the game. Great batting from Max Turner and Nathan Parkes gave Kamo the ability to build pressure while some skilful bowling from Billy Alexander-Crawford put teams on the back-foot, restricting their run-rate.
Kamo will now look forward to making more history as they look towards the tournament starting on March 25 where they will get the chance to qualify as the Northern Districts representative at the national competition later in the year.
