Rotating batsmen every game and chucking the ball to players keen on rolling their arms doesn't necessarily weaken a cricket team's resolve.
In fact, a Havelock North Cricket Club age-group boys' team have shown it can actually be to the contrary, after mounting a Herculean run chase to eclipse the285-6 total of Auckland University CC counterparts in a 50-over match during the annual Riverbend Cricket camp in Hawke's Bay last week.
The villagers, competing in the year 8 boys' grade last Wednesday at Park Island, won by five wickets with two balls to spare.
In keeping with the spirit of the camp, there were heroes in both camps but this was emphatically a statement of collective progress, not individualism.
"We rotated our batsmen every game. We've done that for the last two years and I noticed everybody can get scores because we're giving everyone opportunities," says Matthew Hardgrave, who helped Hereworth School sports co-ordinator Lincoln Doull mentor the youngsters.
Hardgrave says exposing myriad players to different positions of batting and bowling means everyone is wicket savvy in carving out runs or claiming scalps in a campaign where defeats aren't considered as blemishes.
"That's been really good as far as development is concerned," he says after they lost their last match at the camp.
Sam Cassidy was the linchpin against Auckland University but, more importantly, is among the several exhibits of evidence that helps put ticks in the boxes of the Pods system.
The 13-year-old right-hand batsman, who carried his bat in the innings, scored 143 runs off 115 balls, including a dozen boundaries, at No 4.
Cassidy felt chasing down the total was do-able because he had Logan Ryniker-Doull still at the crease as the opener went on to score 71 runs from 102 balls, including nine fours before Rohan Chilluvuri bowled him.
"I'd seen him score runs before so our plan was to stay in and go for ones and twos," the captain says of Ryniker-Doull.
No 5 George Nilsson and No 7 Tim Slabberkoorn saw the innings through with Cassidy, both scoring 19 runs and the latter remaining unbeaten off 10 balls.
Cassidy upped the tempo from the 36th over when Havelock North required 10-plus an over to boost their run rates.
The first-year Lindisfarne College pupil says it was a sweltering day so staying rehydrated every couple of overs in the last few overs was important.
"It was very hard because University were very good at chatting on the field so we just had to keep our minds on the game," says Cassidy.
It was a maiden century for the former Hereworth School pupil who amassed 100 runs purely from singles and twos as his team scored 289-5 in 49.4 overs.
Opener Sam Cassidy, 13, carried his bat in scoring 143. Photo / Supplied
"The plan was to keep me on strike when George and Tim came in so we just ran those."
Cassidy is excited about carrying on impending Bay age-group representative tournaments provided he makes an impression on the selectors.
The teenager also bowls medium-fast deliveries as an opener. During the tourney he found himself sitting on hattricks a couple of times.
"I was sitting on a hattrick against University but it was on the last over of the game so I had to wait for the next game to do it."
Cassidy tends to work harder on his batting than his bowling.
He thanks coaches Indika Senaratne, a Sri Lankan import player for Big Barrel Napier Technical Old Boys premier club, and Paul Unwin, a former first-class cricketer of Hawke's Bay who teaches at Hereworth School, for all the work they had done with him last year.
Unwin coached the Hereworth First XI team this summer.
Cassidy's parents, Jo and Greg, no doubt are extremely proud of him.
"They came in when I was on about 90 [runs]," he says, after they had celebrated eating out that night.
Hardgrave has been involved with Cassidy since he was 9.
"He's a hard-working kid and he's a great bowler, too."
When Cassidy first started playing, Hardgrave says, he wasn't a natural run scorer but this he worked hard with Senaratne and Unwin throughout winter.
"It's now paying off."
While the result was amazing he feels what the youngsters gleaned off the game will define their characters. They faced a strong University side who had outstanding batsmen in openers Kamal Kharel who George Field ran out for 100 and Pawan Kharel, who Slabbekoorn denied a century, caught Tom Allen for 99 runs.
However, Havelock North had boosted their total with 63 extras, including 32 wides.
"It was huge for 12- and 13-year-olds to chase down that especially in that heat."
He and Doull had impressed on the Havelock boys the need to score four to five runs an over without conceding wickets before chancing their arm in the last 13 to 14 overs.
Hardgrave emphasises all the shots were educated ones, accrued patiently through the "V" and over the ropes to mid-on and mid-off territories, as batsmen spurned the desire to hoick deliveries into cow corners.
"He [Cassidy] was very smart in that in very last ball of the over he would take a single to maintain strike in the next over," he says of the batsman who this summer scored a half-ton to steer his Hastings age-group rep side to victory over Napier counterparts before the camp.
