Magpies no match for our Hawke

SPORT COMMENT - PETER LAMPP

OPINION: A drum-roll, please, for the intestinal fortitude of the Manawatu cricket team at Napier.

They dug in on a hard, flat pitch and buried Hawke's Bay nose first to bring the Hawke Cup back to Palmerston North on Monday night.

Manawatu had been just as gutsy a few weeks ago, when they went to New Plymouth and knocked over Taranaki at Pukekura Park.

One of our newspaper brothers up there bleated about batsman George Worker coming in as a late reinforcement, even though he was surplus to Central Districts requirements that weekend.

It's not Manawatu's fault that it produces twice as many top cricketers as any other district within the sprawling CD empire.

Worker's ton was the key in that match and he had every right to be there.

We weren't there at Nelson Park, but the whoops from the players were audible through the phone on Monday afternoon when Hawke's Bay realised they were gone-busters.

This was done without Worker and our bevy of CD and New Zealand players.

Another positive was that the Cup stays within Central Districts. And if Manawatu display the guts they showed at Napier, the Hawke won't be leaving for Northern Districts (via Bay of Plenty) after the first defence.

The Manawatu players were surprised when they arrived in Napier to see Hawke's Bay win the toss and put Manawatu in on a friendly deck.

All right, the Magpies had Manawatu wobbling at 60 for four at one stage, but that was a temporary situation.

It was gratifying to see Ian Sandbrook back in the cricket whites after he gave the game away a few years ago to play soccer.

He might be only 26, but he has been the team coach for the last couple of seasons as well as running Manawatu cricket.

Even as a wee bairn from Ashhurst, he had a mature cricket head, and it is obviously suited to three-day cricket.

Twice at Napier, he went out and decided Hawke's Bay weren't going to dislodge him. They got him only once, and that was via a big in-ducking yorker which would have uprooted Sachin Tendulkar.

In his second dig, Sandbrook simply broke Hawke's Bay hearts.

He didn't give them a chance and Bay skipper Marc Calkin is reported to have said afterwards: "It was like bowling at a wall."

Sandbrook was the only player to have featured the last time Manawatu won the Cup, and he was a nipper of 18 then.

That's not to disregard the batting of century-maker Roald Badenhorst, who got his ton off 186 balls in 262 minutes, his gritty South-African heritage coming to the fore.

And Adam Milne, for the umpteenth time, showed how unlucky he was not to play for the New Zealand under-19 team in the recent World Cup, with bat and ball.

David Meiring had designs on being a professional golfer as a young lad and his second-innings 59 at Napier was very professional. Now he is part of the CD A team in only his second season comeback in cricket. He could be Manawatu's next CD player, as certainly will be Manawatu and New Zealand under-19 bowling spearhead Bevan Small.

Day two, Sunday, was a blazing hot day, and Manawatu's very young attack applied the sun slop, came out and just went for it.

At one stage, Milne had bowled 13 overs for just 13 runs. Hawke's Bay just didn't get a sniff.

We were led to believe Manawatu strangely declared their second innings closed at tea on Monday afternoon still with two wickets in hand.

The norm in Hawke Cup cricket is to bat right out and bolt the gate.

We now know Sandbrook hadn't declared.

It was just that the New Zealand Cricket people had to add "declared" to the total so they could exit the computer program.

- © Fairfax NZ News