2024/25 HALLYBURTON JOHNSTONE SHIELD
Round 7
Saturday 8 February 2025
Pukekura Park, New Plymouth
CENTRAL HINDS defeated NORTHERN DISTRICTS by 4 wickets
Bonus point win
Central Hinds : 5 points
Northern Districts : 0 points
All images: PHOTOSPORT
Selected Milestones
Jesse Prasad - maiden List A five-wicket bag
Jesse Prasad - List A hat-trick
Eve Wolland - Maiden List A half century
After a sound team performance, the casual observer might barely have recognised the team that finished dead last in the Dream11 Super Smash.
The Central Hinds have a much better record in the one-day format, and so it proved again as the last four rounds of the Hallyburton Johnstone Shield kicked off with a visit from ND.
The Hinds began the day in second spot on the table, and they ended it in the same position - but now with a much handier seven-point gap on the chasing pack, after their second bonus point win of the summer.
It was an all-round team performance, a strong total of 272 on the tins from a series of partnerships - and this after having been sent in by Northern Districts captain Jess Watkin, taking on her old team.
Mikaela Greig and Hannah Rowe still managed to stand out as the day progressed.
Several of the local team - Georgia Atkinson, Kerry Tomlinson and Ocean Bartlett, were fresh off winning the NZC Māori Nationals the day before, in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.
Atkinson and Tomlinson had done the bulk of the run-scoring there and carried their form over into the HBJ, without stopping or time to train.
For opener Atkinson, the week was a welcome return to form as she contributed 36 at the top, putting on 70 for the first wicket with Emma McLeod (30) who was freshly back from the U19 World Cup.
But there was a little fightback from ND as drinks neared, Nensi Patel making the breakthrough with Atkinson outfoxed, and then getting Thamsyn Newton who exited to a return catch two balls later.
The Hinds has been 70/0 but were suddenly 75/3 when Jesse Prasad got in on the action, McLeod sending up a skier in the 15th and the early momentum swinging.
Slippery Prasad was in for a good day. She claimed her best List A figures with a maiden five-wicket bag, an impressive haul of 5/40 off 7.1 overs.
But it just wasn't Northern's day.
Hinds captain Mikaela Greig came in at four, and quickly showed her intent, dancing down the track to the spinners.
Her half century flew off 63 balls, and by the time she departed in the 40th over, she'd hit two sixes and seven boundaries in her 77 runs, and the Hinds were in a good position again at 219/6.
Greig had good support from left-hander Flora Devonshire (35), and Tomlinson went on to contribute 39 off just 31 balls as the runs kept flowing.
Thanks to Prasad, Northern had the satisfaction at least of dismissing them in the penultimate over, and it produces a final fillip for Prasad who achieved a split hat-trick - completing the feat with the first ball of the 49th, and sealing her bag in the process.
It was just the fourth List A hat-trick for the team, and the first in over a decade.
The Hinds knew they needed to get Watkin our early in the chase to stop a big dent in the required run rate, and Rowe delivered the goods - trapping the power hitter with just her fourth nut.
She was on her way to a tidy 4/42 as the hosts bowled out Northern for 207 in 42.1 overs, strangling them at the top with regular wickets until the career best fightback from Wolland at seven.
The youngster took her PB to 76 off 94 balls, combining sweetly with Prasad in the lower order who carried on her shiny day with a handy 42, so close to a second half century in her career.
But then Claudia Green, who'd been finding movement all day, came back swinging, destroying the 107-run stand for the seventh ND wicket.
That was almost the ND record, but Northern remained too far behind the eight ball for most of the chase. The result took the gloss off Prasad's speccy, but there will be a second chance when the teams reconvene tomorrow.
