Rep men toil for scant reward

By JARED DENNIS jared.dennis@wanganuichronicle.co.nz
United's crop of representative bowlers had a good workout without a lot of success on Saturday, with the side in the field for 84 overs against Collegiate in the Wanganui premier two-day cricket competition.
The much-needed bowling practice ahead of the start of the Wanganui senior representative season this weekend was about the only highlight in the club side's hard-fought first innings victory.
While that match dragged out to an inevitable draw, the other game in the premier grade, between Wanganui High School first XI and Marist, was over by lunch. The school players claimed their second outright victory over a club side for the season, showing they deserve to be two-day champions and are early favourites for the overall title.
United, which started the season with the best side on paper, did show some good bowling form when eventually dismissing Wanganui Collegiate School first XI for 133. The school side had started the day at 16/3 chasing 237.
Overall Collegiate's first innings took 93 overs and featured some staunch defensive batting by the likes of Ben Smith (47), Tom Bruce (19) and Chris Richardson (19). United captain Andrew Cording decided to enforce the follow-on and Collegiate came out and batted for 15 overs to be 20 without loss, when it was decided to call the match off.
Cording, who is also the Wanganui representative captain, said he thought all his bowlers had been tight and created a number of chances, with himself and likely fellow reps Gareth Jones and Jamie Whiteman getting through a number of overs.
"It's probably the best I've seen him bowl," Cording said of Jones, who showed good pace and accuracy when taking 3-27.
Whiteman was "always there and ther abouts", bowling as tight as ever for his return of 3-17. Cording himself, who finished with figures of 2-27, said he was feeling a little out of form early in the season but the workout would likely to have helped. He had especially enjoyed bowling on the pacy Collegiate No 1 pitch.
"It's the best wicket in Wanganui by a long way," he said. "It would be good to be able to play on wickets like that all the time."
The captain said he was happy enough with the first innings points, although "an outright victory would have been nicer".
"We dropped a few early chances, which probably put us back an hour or so," he said.
While United were missing its early chances, High School made the most of any that came in its match with Marist at Victoria Park.
After taking first innings points last week, the school players were confident when the club side resumed its second innings at 41/5.
The wickets continued to fall quickly, with Sam Clark (5-21) the chief destroyer for High School. Marist was all out for 69.
That meant High School only needed 68 for its second outright of the season, and a good opening partnership between Latham Berry (26) and Max Montgomery (24no) secured the dominant nine-wicket win and the even more dominant overall points victory in the two-day competition.