Greytown top order batsman Mark Childs had a best score of 124 in Wairarapa senior club cricket up until 10 days ago. Well, all that has changed over the last two Saturdays with the former Central Districts under-20 representative following a masterly knock of 152 against the Rathkeale Cricket Academy withan equally impressive 158 against Wairarapa College, both of them in Umpires Cup limited-overs matches. Centuries in successive weekends by the same player are, of course, not uncommon at club level but successive 150's would happen very seldom. In fact, Childs's feat has been touted as a "first" for the Wairarapa and very probably is.. Childs admits his accomplishment, the second of which took Greytown into Sunday's final of the Umpires Cup one-day competition where he was dismissed for just five in the loss to Red Star, took its toll on his 33-year-old body. "It was hard work, I was down on my haunches a lot over the last part of both of them," he said.. "It was new territory for me and I felt it, mentally and physically." Childs said he was helped by the fact that in both instances he had long partnerships with Blake Lyford, a 17-year-old from Kuranui College, the first of them worth more than 200 runs and the second over 150... "Blake's only a young fellow and he is pretty quick between the wickets&.he kept an old fella like me on my toes," Childs said. It was in 1992 that Mark Childs made his debut in the Wairarapa senior competition and, apart from three or four seasons off because of family commitments, he has been a regular since then The Childs curriculum vitae includes many appearances for Wairarapa, several of them as captain, but those days are over with his focus now firmly on ensuring that the Greytown club, of which he is currently club captain, remains a healthy and vibrant force on the Wairarapa inter-club scene.
