‘Kids showed a lot of promise’ during Primary Festival Day

Makauri School’s Axel Murray attempts to put bat to ball asWainui wicket keeper Jack Murphy watches on at the Primary Festival Day last week. Pictures by Liam Clayton

Last Wednesday was a great one for youth cricket at Harry Barker Reserve.

The reserve served as the venue for the Primary Festival Day on which 10 teams from nine schools played five fast-paced games of eight-a-side, eight-overs soft-ball cricket.

Wainui fielded two teams, Motu had a stand-alone team and also fielded a combined team with Ngatapa.

“The kids, coaches, teachers and parent-helpers did a wonderful job of being inclusive of the younger cricketers, and helping Daniel Stewart and I to run the day for the 87 participants,” said Josiah Turner, Poverty Bay Cricket’s development officer and competitions administrator.

“The kids showed a lot of promise and by the end of play, their game-sense had improved enormously. The atmosphere and camaraderie was awesome. We wanted to connect people, make memories . . . and we did.”

Development activator Stewart said: “It was good to see the kids play with smiles on their faces, having a good time with friends and building relationships with others from different schools.

“The unbeaten Mangapapa crew looked good. Their players were really skilful. Wainui also have some young cricketers coming on. From every team, I saw accurate bowling and solid fielding, and great recognition of where the batsmen would hit the ball if they were hitting off a tee.”

Poverty Bay Cricket director of umpiring Jason Trowill was the coach of the Makauri Legends, three of whose players had played cricket before and nine of whom were new to the sport.

“It was an awesome introduction to the sport,” Trowill said.

“Hopefully we’ll sign up lots of the kids to play regularly in local competitions.”’

“This was really good, not only for the kids and the schools, but for cricket as a whole in Poverty Bay.”

The Primary Festival having been done and dusted, there followed a low-scoring Gisborne Boys’ High School derby in the T20 Challenge Cup.

A week out from today’s T20 semifinals, the Campion College second 11 withdrew from the competition, forfeiting their Round 5 match to GBHS Blues and Royals.

The Admiralty made it five straight wins with a nine-wicket trumping of the Blues and Royals on the representative wicket and will face a new entity led by Charlie Whitfield, freshly-minted side The King’s Own, on the rep wicket in the semis from 3.30pm today.

The Blues play the Life Guards under Ted Gillies on the No.2 ground.

Gillies won the toss for the only match played in Round 5, and chose to bat.

The Guards  are a better batting side than indicated in their 57 all-out from 18.5 overs in a nine-wicket loss.

Alex Langford, at No.10, led the Guards’ batting effort with 11. The top order made 11 runs as a unit.

Dynamo Arthur Cave took three wickets for eight runs two overs, winning leg-before-wicket decisions against young opener Hugo Phillips (6) and Gillies (2) at first-drop.

Equally impressive were Jake Kirkpatrick (2-7 from two overs), a natural outswing bowler, and wicketkeeper-cum-paceman Jack Roberts (2-6 off 1.5 overs).

Roberts cleaned up the tail, having Langford caught by skipper Caleb Taewa at mid-wicket.

In defence of 57, Jonah Reynolds (1-7 from two overs) took the only scalp for the Guards.

He bowled Patrick McInnes (1) with the score at eight.

Taewa (32) and Kobe Donnelly (10) put on 50 for the second wicket, a stand in which technicians established their presence in the middle over by over.

Both batsmen played straight. Taewa was strong on the pull-shot and Donnelly got off the mark with perhaps the shot of the match, a text-book off-drive for two.

The game was won on a wide, in 11.3 overs.

Taewa said: “We put the Life Guards under pressure with our fielding. We didn’t let much through, didn’t drop any catches and the bowling was tight.

“Kobe batted solidly with me and didn’t give his wicket away, which was another bonus.”