It didn't take long this morning for Michael Papps to join an elite club.
With a single off Robbie O'Donnell at Colin Maiden Park, the opening veteran took himself to 138 — and the career milestone of his 10,000th run in first-class cricket.
Papps had begun the fourth day needing just two more runs for the honour, and at 35 becomes the 24th New Zealander to achieve the feat. Typically, "Pappy" was more immediately concerned with aggressively growing the Firebirds' lead in order to allow his captain to declare, after his side had wrested the advantage from the Mondiale Auckland Aces.
Papps, who has also played eight Tests and six One-Day Internationals for the BLACKCAPS, began his first-class career when the then teenager was called into the Canterbury team in 1999. His four-ball duck in his first innings, against Otago, is now a distant memory, his punishing 171 at Colin Maiden Park this morning his 27th first-class century.
Papps represented Canterbury in 95 first-class games until the beginning of the 2011/12 season, when he moved to Wellington. He is still Canterbury's second-highest all time run-maker at first-class level, with his 6,663 runs for his old team second only to Peter Fulton's 7,450.
For the Firebirds, he has scored over 2400 runs at an average close to 40.
Team by team, the players to have scored the most career first-class runs for each Plunket Shield side are:
9,148 Mathew Sinclair, Devon Hotel Central Stags
7,450 Peter Fulton, Canterbury
6,589 Craig Cumming, SBS Bank Otago Volts
6,565 Matthew Bell, Wellington Firebirds
6,418 James Marshall, SKYCITY Northern Knights
5,980 Tim McIntosh, Mondiale Auckland Aces
The New Zealand all-time record belongs to Glenn Turner who made 34,346 runs across New Zealand, County and international first-class cricket from the 1960s to the early 1980s.
