Results of limited-overs cricket matches are always difficult to predict because of the unpredictability of the game and that situation will be further exacerbated when Umpire's Cup senior men's inter-club competition games resume in Wairarapa tomorrow.
With the Hawke Cup elimination match between Wairarapa
and Hawke's Bay in its final
day at Queen
Elizabeth Park Oval teams will have to take the field without their star players and the quality of their replacements could make all the difference between victory and defeat.
This is especially so for the
game between Wairarapa College and Flight Centre Lansdowne at Wairarapa College with the students missing
"big guns" Robbie Anderson, Daniel Ingham and Paul Bracewell and Lansdowne without Sam Curtis, Henry Cameron, Alec Treseder, Robin James, Simon Butler and Brock Price.
Most of those players mentioned above are best-known for
their batting skills which
means in-form bowlers like Mark Scully (Lansdowne)
and Sean Jarvis (Wairarapa College) will be relishing the prospect of significantly adding to their wicket haul on this occasion.
Red Star and Rathkeale College should have an interesting battle at Rathkeale with much likely to depend on the availability of talented all-rounder Dean van Deventer for Rathkeale.
He was unavailable for the Hawke Cup game because of it clashing with the college's end-of-year presentation function but whether that meant he was also ruled out of playing at club level was unclear at the time these notes were penned.
Certainly Red Star won't needed reminding of the havoc wreaked at the bowling crease by van Deventer when the two sides met in a recent Bidwell Cup two-dayer.
He claimed eight of the wickets to fall when Red Star was dismissed for just 47 in their first innings then.
Two Red Star players who will be keen to make a big impact with the bat tomorrow will be Daniel Stoneley and Joe Hull who were both regulars in the Wairarapa squad last season and could consider themselves unlucky to be overlooked for the current line-up.
On the representative front Wairarapa and Hawke's Bay will end their Hawke Cup match tomorrow and then play their Chapple Cup one-dayer, also at the Park Oval, on Sunday.
The high number of natural stroke makers in the Wairarapa squad does suggest the limited-overs format might, in fact, suit them better than the two-day concept and they should give a powerful Hawke's Bay squad a decent run for their money.
