2022/23 • ROUND 10
OTAGO VOLTS defeated NORTHERN DISTRICTS by 7 wickets
University of Otago Oval, Dunedin
14 February 2023
Bonus point win
Points this round: Volts 5, ND 0
Selected milestones
13th List A century: Hamish Rutherford
All images | PHOTOSPORT
The Ford Trophy regular season of 2022/23 finished in extraordinary circumstances.
With the Central Stags already in the Grand Final as top qualifier, all six teams had been due to play in the 10th and final round on the same day - with the remaining five teams all in with a chance of making the top three for the Finals in Queenstown in a crazily tight contest.
But the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle on the North Island would also have a wrecking ball effect on those chances, ruling out defending champions the Auckland Aces and the Wellington Firebirds who had been due to meet in the bottom of the table match in Auckland.
That match was cancelled due to the State of Emergency, the split points for it pushing the Volts to the bottom of the table.
Then the Stags-Canterbury game in Napier was abandoned after heavy overnight winds and rain in severely flooded Hawke's Bay. The two points for the abandonment were enough to seal Canterbury's spot in the 2v3 Elimination Final coming up this Friday... turning the Volts-ND game in Dunedin into a knockout for the last spot.
Despite the heart-breaking scenes of landslips, floods, crushed houses and destroyed bridges further north in New Zealand, sunny skies greeted the players in Dunedin where the show would go on, in a big game of one-day cricket.
Max Chu shared a century stand with Rutherford
The Volts needed a big one. A bonus-point win, or a win big enough to boost their run rate ahead of ND's. Northern just needed to win.
Both teams had a BLACKCAP back in one-day mode for the crunch match, Glenn Phillips coming back for the Volts and Mitch Santner for ND - fresh off playing a big role for Northern Brave in the weekend's Dream11 Super Smash trophy defence.
The Volts had also regained the services of captain Hamish Rutherford who had been ruled out of their unsuccessful T20 Elimination Final the previous week with a back problem.
Rutherford won the toss and sent Northern in, and it proved a good decision as Michael Rae struck early to remove the explosive Katene Clark at 7/1.
Ben Lockrose was soon in the thick of the action, whether it was taking a wicket, or catching the ball. Later he made a runout. It all added up to four of the big top six Northern batsmen dismissed for single-figure scores as the Volts quickly got on top, while number four Joe Carter meanwhile had to leave the field on 18 after what appeared to be a sudden groin injury as he played a shot.
At 72/4, with Carter under a cloud, Northern had not got the start they were after at all. But opener Tim Seifert remained, and his cautious 47 was essential to steadying the ship.
After Jake Gibson had celebrate the valuable wicket of Santner, Seifert found a partnership with allrounder Brett Hampton who seemed to brush aside the tension, hammering a top score of 73.
The pair put on 63 for the sixth wicket, and Hampton would cart three sixes as well as eight boundaries in his knock, that 73 flying off just 67 balls.
After Seifert was run out by, who else, Lockrose for his valiant 47, Hampton kept things moving with Kristian Clarke, dominating a 51-run stand until Matt Bacon (3-36) finally had the big hitter caught.
Rae then mopped up the tail to finish with 4-50, Northern dismissed for 240 with three balls left unutilised, and Carter having bravely come back to continue his innings at the death, finishing unbeaten on 20*.
Northern had done well to recover, but on a good Uni Oval surface, lunch will have been a nervous affair for the visitors. Then Rutherford stepped up right when it mattered most.
After a tough run of form through the meat of the summer, Hamish Rutherford bounced back from his painful back injury and disappointments to reach his eighth one-day hundred for the Volts, and 13th of his overall one-day career.
He would carry his bat through the chase to finish unbeaten on 120*, kissing his helmet in an understated celebration, in phlegmatic, southern man style.
Rutherford had put on a century stand for the first wicket with Max Chu. Chu reached 48 off 67 before he was caught by Freddy Walker (Carter's substitute in the field), a momentary relief for Tim Pringle at 102/1 in the 21st over.
Kristian Clarke (3-24) then got the big wicket of Glenn Phillips cheaply the very next over, the young allrounder having filled in for Scott Kuggeleijn at the top of the attack after Kuggeleijn was called away for the BLACKCAPS Test squad in Bay Oval.
But the Otago captain was still there, and had settled in for the long haul, with Dean Foxcroft's 47 providing stability as well.
By the 30-over mark, the Volts needed 65 runs off 20 overs at 3.25 per over, and plenty of wickets in hand. It was a textbook win under pressure, and top captain's knock to get the Volts into what was technically a home Elimination Final at Queenstown (the venue for all white-ball finals this summer) as the third qualifier behind Canterbury.
Otago's impressive white-ball summer rolled on, but for Northern it would be the end of the quest for twin white-ball trophies in 2022/23.
