CRICKET: Bay men need miracle to retain Hawkes Cup

Anendra Singh | 8th February 2010

A penny for Dale Smidt's thoughts.

The Hawke's Bay senior men's cricket coach was too preoccupied with trying to evict SportToday from the Nelson Park pavilion in Napier over the "we-didn't-serve-the-Afghans-pork" debacle yesterday, reiterating his no-comment policy on the Hawke Cup.

"You can't talk to the players either," he said, after they were all instructed not to comment in the dressing room.

Smidt's boss, Hawke's Bay Cricket CEO Paul Anderson, has instructed the coach, who is also employed as high performance and development officer, and other association staff not to accommodate Hawke's Bay Today after it published a story a fortnight ago of an incensed Afghanistan under-19 cricket team, here for the World Cup plate play-offs, who opted not to eat meat for the duration of the tournament after they ate "toasted ham sandwiches" at the pavilion.

It appears the Bay cricketers and skipper Marc Calkin have more urgent matters to attend to today if they are going to keep their hands on the silverware in the battle of minor union supremacy.

To cut to the chase, the Hawke Cup is already a healthy distance on the motorway to the Manawatu Gorge unless something miraculous happens today on the final day of the three-day challenge against holders Bay at Nelson Park.

"We're pretty over the moon about it," Manawatu skipper Luke Murray told SportToday, bewildered as to why the cup holders had won the toss and asked them to pad up.

In fact, so was Central Districts Stags batsman Mathew Sinclair when he heard of the Bay's stance after the toss.

"Even [captain called in for CD's one-day campaign] Brad [Patton] is sitting here next to me scratching his head. In all the challenges I've played in, we've always batted first when we won the toss," Sinclair replied in disbelief.

"You always have to go hard out first because there's no pressure to score runs," the former international added.

Oops, too late. Instead Manawatu racked up 298 runs in their first innings after 94.1 overs on Saturday.

"We bowled pretty well to dismiss Hawke's Bay for 137. The boys stuck to the task, bowled good channels and the intensity in the field was great," a delighted Manawatu skipper Luke Murray said.

"We've backed it up with a pretty good last session with 110 for three so we've got a 271-run lead going into the last day [today]," he said.

In the last over of their second innings yesterday, No 4 Dave Meiring fell victim for 59 runs to a Morten Freer lbw.

No 5 Dane Cleaver was on the crease this morning with player/coach Ian Sandbrook, who took a stoic stance yesterday, unbeaten on 30 after facing 126 balls for 150 minutes. He opened in the first innings but dropped to No 3 yesterday.

The Bay call after the toss also left the challengers gobsmacked.

"It did [surprise us] actually. To me the state of the pitch was a bat-first pitch and I think they probably missed a little bit of a trick there. They should have batted and tried to put on a massive total to put us under pressure but it's pretty much the other way round.

"Having lost the toss, we expected them to come at us pretty hard with four pretty quick bowlers and with the fireworks a bit of verbal possibly. We're actually quite surprised they didn't say a lot to us so our batsmen dug themselves in because we were able to combat everything they threw at us," Murray said after Roald Badenhorst scored 107 before fast bowler Jeremy Kuru got his scalp.

Havelock North's Kurt Richards was the pick of the bowlers with a five-wicket bag.

Murray's goal today is to occupy the crease for at least for a total of more than 400 before declaring.

"While we're in a super strong position we're still obviously going to keep our heads down and play for each other.

"Hopefully, fingers crossed, we'll have a challenge in Palmerston North next week," he said, paying tribute to CD under-19 representative Badenhorst for his all-round effort after the 19-year-old also snared four wickets in the Bay's first innings where only Cornwall club batsman Michael Taiaroa offered some resistance with 39 runs. Calkin was the next highest on 20 while others failed to break that mark.

"He's [Badenhorst] an awesome up-and-coming guy. We train together and see how hard he works. He's dedicated and spent the winter in England and did pretty well over there.

"He's got a great mind. We believe he's got a great future if he keeps working hard," he said.