Three changes made for Hawke Cup qualifier

Three changes have been made to the Wairarapa senior men's cricket team for their Hawke Cup qualifying match with Manawatu at Palmerston North this coming Friday and Saturday from that which beat Wanganui last weekend.
Unavailable for selection were Greytown duo Hayden Spierling and Jeremy Anderson while Red Star opening batsman Daniel Stonely has been dropped.
Replacing them are Brad Edwards (Red Star) and Willie Tatham (Greytown), both of whom were not available for the Wanganui match, and Red Star's Jarred Watt, who didn't play the Hawke Cup game against Wanganui but who was included in the Wairarapa squad for Sunday's Chapple Cup one-dayer, which they lost by seven wickets.
In what will be his debut appearance for Wairarapa at Hawke Cup level, Edwards seems certain to open the batting with Wairarapa skipper Sam Curtis while Tatham will probably be at first drop, thereby allowing Academy's Chad Yates to slot in at number four.
Watt will replace Spierling as a key member of the Wairarapa pace attack although his scintillating 100 for Red Star in a club match on Saturday suggests he could lay claims to being in the all-rounder category.
It would be no surprise, however, to find that the composition of the Wairarapa side for next Sunday's Chapple Cup game with Manawatu will be different to that fronting up for the Hawke Cup match.
This is because both Jeremy Anderson and Spierling will be back in the reckoning then and their form against Wanganui will make them hard to overlook. Spierling took eight wickets in the Hawke Cup victory while Anderson top scored with 56 in the Chapple Cup encounter.
Wairarapa convenor of selectors Dermot Payton said form in the Hawke Cup game at Palmerston North would very probably decide who, if anybody, Spierling and Anderson replaced for the one-day action.
"That was one of those magical performances that come along very seldom, we bowled well and we caught everything that came our way. It was outstanding stuff."
"We do have a number of options in that respect so the final choices won't be made until the Hawke Cup game has ended," he said.
Reflecting on the two matches against Wanganui, Payton said the two very different results were pretty much a case of Wairarapa playing somewhere near their potential in one match (Hawke Cup) and nowhere near it in the other (Chapple Cup).
"They showed how vulnerable we can be when things don't quite go according to plan and that's what we've got to work on," he said. "It was good to get one win but we should have had two, that's the mindset we have to create."
The highlight of the Hawke Cup success for Payton was Wairarapa's effort in the field when Wanganui were dismissed for just 48 in their first innings.
"That was one of those magical performances that come along very seldom, we bowled well and we caught everything that came our way. It was outstanding stuff," he said.
A tendency for the bowlers to bowl too short did, however, lessen the impact of the Wairarapa attack when Wanganui batted a second time and they were still able to set Wairarapa target of 168 runs for the outright win.
"The bowlers were probably relying a little too much on the pitch to do something for them rather than focusing on forcing the batsmen to play every ball," Payton said. "We took the pressure off them a bit and they were good enough to capitalise."
Payton was happy though with the way Wairarapa approached their second innings with skipper Sam Curtis, who scored an unbeaten 78, anchoring an innings which saw them reach their target for the loss of five wickets.
"He (Curtis) was in a position where it was important he led from the front and he did exactly that," Payton said. "It was a very responsible knock, just what we needed in the circumstances."
The manner in which the Park Oval pitch had levelled out and become something of a batsmen's paradise on the second day of the Hawke Cup match enticed Wairarapa to bat first in the Chapple Cup game with Payton saying a score of at least 250 was seen to be competitive.
As it happened Wairarapa fell well short of that, making 171 in 42 overs, with too many of their batsmen being guilty of "soft" dismissals by playing aerial shots and being caught.
"If you are going to hit the ball in the air you have to pick the gaps and we didn't do that," Payton said. "We made the bowling look a whole lot better than it was."
Wanganui lost only the three wickets in their successful run chase with the emphasis being on picking up singles on a regular basis, something which Wairarapa made too easy for them at times.
"We needed to force them to take a few risks with the idea of maybe picking up a catch or two so we were probably a little bit defensive in how we played," Payton said.