Wairarapa selector-coach Mark Brown isn't laying the blame on his players for their huge defeat at the hands of holders Hamilton in their Hawke Cup challenge cricket game at Hamilton last weekend.
After overcoming the odds to defeat the usual powerhouses of Manawatu, Hawke's Bay and Taranaki in their qualifying games, Wairarapa crashed at the last hurdle, scoring just 137 runs in their pursuit of the 678 runs needed to match Hamilton's first innings effort.
Brown said the size of the loss simply illustrated the gulf between Wairarapa and a Hamilton side containing 10 players who had represented Northern Districts at first-class level, including Black Caps wicketkeeper BJ Watling, whose 170 made him the top individual scorer. Other century-makers for Hamilton were skipper Keir Bettley (145) and former Rathkeale College all-rounder Andy Dodd (137).
"They (Hamilton) won the toss and basically batted for two days (199 overs), it takes a very good team to do that no matter who they are playing," Brown said. "Our guys tried bloody hard but they were outclassed, that's the truth of it."
The early loss of their only first-class player, Seth Rance, with the recurrence of a shoulder injury after he had bowled just three overs was a huge blow to Wairarapa's bowling resources and it was hardly surprising that medium pacers Dean van Deventer (34.5 overs), Daniel Ingham (38.7 overs) and Robin James (32.4 overs) were all walking gingerly after their heavy workload.
"They didn't quit, they stuck at it all the way through," Brown said, adding that the batter-friendly conditions were always going to make batsmen of the calibre of Watling difficult to remove. He came to the wicket with Hamilton somewhat on the back foot at 108-4 and departed 307 runs later.
By the time Wairarapa were required to bat any prospect of a first innings win had well and truly disappeared and, after losing 4-17 towards the end of the second day, just making it into three figures could be called a comeback of sorts.
"We were basically playing for nothing other than pride on the last day and it was good to see some fight there," Brown said.
The unavailability of usual skipper and gun all-rounder Greg Todd became a talking point for Wairarapa as he was required by the Central Stags as part of their limited-overs national competition squad but was not included in their line-up for the final against the Auckland Aces on Sunday.
Brown described that situation as "frustrating" but said there was little Wairarapa could do about it as it was out of their control.
"You certainly can't say having Greg would have changed the result but it would have been a big help for us, wouldn't it?" Brown said.