Reading into the way the domestic season came to a close this April, the “next level down” of the New Zealand game is in excellent shape.
In a balmy first-class summer that stretched from Labour Weekend to after Easter — one in which the weather largely behaved itself, bar the odd tantrum, there was just one match left going in the final session of the final afternoon of the 2017/18 season.
After almost six months wielding willow on the road, bodies and minds naturally look forward to a break. The back end of the Plunket Shield, any Kiwi cricketer will tell you, tests your mettle. But there were the Central Stags and Northern Districts with antlers still locked at Nelson Park.
It had been stinking hot through most of the first two sessions, pleasant neither for batsmen nor bowlers and fieldsmen, on a late-season deck no longer offering nothing much in the way of anything.
Stags captain Will Young batting defiantly on the last day of 2017/18. MButcher/NZC
The Stags already had the Plunket Shield championship sewn up regardless of the result here. Mentally, it would have been easy for the close-knit team of mainly 20-somethings to flag it and go grab the champagne bottles waiting in the bar fridge in readiness for the presentation celebrations. But neither side was giving in as they battled out the draw.
Only one wicket fell on that day, that of Tom Bruce for 40. Back on the tumultuous first day that saw both sides bundled out on what was then a swinging green seamer, it had been Bruce who had rescued the Central Stags and got them past 50 when they had been staring at the possibility of recording their lowest ever first class score, having been 22 for six. For a team that had been undefeated all season, that would have gone down as quite a blot on their copybook.
Captain Will Young batted throughout the last day, until ND decided hunting any further wicket was a futile cause. He had batted for almost six hours, for 75*. Dane Cleaver had raced ahead of him to 87*, in a mere four hours of occupation. Quite clearly, they were in no mood to lose to ND, a first-class team featuring many of the same faces that had convincingly beaten them in the Burger King Super Smash Grand Final a couple of months earlier.
Despite a good late charge in the T20 competition — they had finished third in the regular season, it was all about to come to a screeching halt for the Stags.
They may have defeated the higher-ranked Auckland Aces at the fortress of Eden Park Outer Oval in the Burger King Super Smash Elimination Final, but they were just as quickly humiliated by top qualifiers the Knights in that 2018 Grand Final.
The Stags' tally of 99 for eight after having chosen to bat was their lowest ever in the format on New Zealand soil, two lopsided Champions League T20s overseas in 2010 the only other throwaways of that ilk.
For the Central side, it was all the more painful having also lost the previous year’s Grand Final to the Wellington Firebirds.
More salt would be rubbed into the wound a little later in the summer after they qualified top of the one-day Ford Trophy, only to be demolished by the Aces in another one-sided Grand Final at Pukekura Park as leg-spinner Tarun Nethula led the way for the visitors, turning in a top drawer performance on a slow deck.
Winning the Plunket Shield championship may have been a salve on the Stags’ season but, despite making both national white-ball Grand Finals, those wounds won’t fully heal until they take the chance to nail one. There will be no getting away from it as a talking point and, like everyone else next summer, they’ll be starting from scratch all over again.
In the small but perfectly formed environment of our six-team national competitions, the contests are intense and rivalries run deep.
Just as the Stags will have taken some satisfaction in turning the tables on the Aces at Outer Oval in the Burger King Super Smash (since they had lost there in a lacklustre performance in the first round); the Aces enjoyed dishing it back to the Stags in the Pukekura Park Ford Trophy Grand Final, after having been on the receiving end of a seven-wicket DLS loss at the same ground to them in the 1v2 Semi-Final.
But, back home at Colin Maiden Park the Aces then swatted aside defending champions Canterbury in a solid Elimination Final victory, Jeet Raval starring with century, the side showing they were more than ready to take on Pukekura Park.
It was a good summer for Auckland Cricket who not only claimed its first men’s one-day title in six seasons, but dominated the Hallyburton Johnstone Shield.
The Auckland Hearts dropped only one game as they claimed the one-day title for the third time in four seasons, this time without a Final, runners-up Wellington Blaze left having to rue their three losses.
Blaze’s exciting line-up still had its moment in the sun when they waltzed away with the national Women’s Twenty20 trophy, however, winning seven out of their 10 matches (one abandonment) to edge the Hearts.
The Auckland Hearts’ healthy season was reflected when Holly Huddleston claimed the Major Association’s Cricketer of the Year award at their end of year gongs, which was only the second time a woman has been awarded Auckland’s supreme trophy, Huddleston following in the footsteps of former WHITE FERNS star Emily Drumm.
Image courtesy of Auckland Cricket
The end of season awards across the country reflected a summer in which a number of talented emerging players delivered their best summer yet.
Central Stags spinner Ajaz Patel was CD’s player of the summer and achieved the feat of being the Plunket Shield’s top wicket-taker for a head-turning third year in a row — he was also crowned New Zealand’s overall Domestic Player of the Year at NZC’s ANZ Cricket Awards for the 2017/18. Young WHITE FERNS talent Hannah Rowe was named the Central Hinds player of the year.
Wicketkeeper-batsmen featured strongly with both Otago’s Derek de Boorder and Canterbury’s Cameron Fletcher winning their respective region’s major awards, each having consistently dug their sides out of trouble across a challenging summer for the other two South Island teams; and Northern Districts/Northern Knights keeper Tim Seifert winning ND’s Player of the Year title for the first time, having displayed striking form and big match composure with the bat in this year’s Burger King Super Smash, form that got him into the BLACKCAPS for the first time, alongside Ace Mark Chapman.
Veteran Kate Ebrahim (née Broadmore) was the Canterbury Magicians' player of the year, captain Liz Perry won the Wellington Blaze award, Leigh Kasperek the Otago Sparks award, and Northern Spirit captain Natalie Dodd was a repeat winner of the women’s top award for her M.A.
One of the three men to claim first-class hat-tricks this summer — alongside Blair Tickner (Stags) and Matt McEwan (Aces), Logan van Beek was the Cricket Wellington men’s cricketer of the year in his first season with his new team.
While Huddleston swept the top gong for Auckland, Hearts captain Maddy Green was Auckland’s Hearts player of the year, and Mark Chapman their individual Ace of the year.
2017/18 — FINAL DOMESTIC STANDINGS
