Breaking records at the cricket - in Hawke's Bay

The centre of the action, bowler, wicketkeeper, and the batsman - Porirua's Carter Birmingham faces up to the opposition against Havelock North at Flaxmere Park. Photo / Warren Buckland

Three weeks of cricket now regarded as one of Hawke's Bay's biggest annual events is also going global with live-streaming of matches via the internet.

Interest in the children's cricket camps - which were started and run by school teacher Ray Mettrick for 22 years and have been held annually since 1979 - has rocketed in recent years, with successive record numbers - from 141 teams in 2019 to 156 last year, and 186 this year.

They were initially based at Riverbend Camp near Havelock North and thus known for most of the time as the Riverbend camps. That camp is still used to accommodate the teams, along with the hostels at Napier Girls' and Napier Boys' high schools.

Matches for the 22 teams in the 8b grade opened the camps on Monday and organiser Craig Findlay, chief executive of Hawke's Bay Cricket Association which took over running the camps in 2001, has scheduled 511 games to be played at up to 13 venues by the time the last of the 10 camps ends on January 26.

The teams, including one from the South Island and 24 from Auckland, comprise 2232 players, with 372 coaches and managers, while hundreds of family members also come to the Bay for the games, which now include children from families in their third generation with the camps.

The venues vary from the regular Saturday-morning grounds like Park Island in Napier and Cornwall Park in Hastings, to the near-rural and less-used Petane Domain, between Napier and Bay View, and Memorial Park, Haumoana.

For those who can't be at the venues, there is the live-streaming, which on Tuesday morning had five matches live on YouTube channels through My Action Replay and CricHQ, in what has become a personal interest for CricHQ general manager and South Africa-born former New Zealand international Grant Elliot.

He is currently on television commentary duties in Christchurch, yesterday watching former camps player and current New Zealand captain and World No 1-ranked batsman Kane Williamson blaze through to 200 in the Black Caps' test match against Pakistan.

Teammate and former captain Ross Taylor was another who cut his teeth on cricket at the Riverbend camps, while among other current internationals who also attended the camps in their younger days are England international Ben Stokes and New Zealand representative Will Somerville.

Among those yesterday at Marewa Park in Napier were 12-year-old Jett Whittaker, from Gisborne and bowling for Poverty Bay against Upper Hutt, and dad Steve Whittaker, who played for Hutt Valley for three years in a row during the camps about 30 years ago and rates the camps as one of the biggest events of the year for cricketers from his area.

The Poverty Bay team in which his son played last year didn't win a game during the week, and started this year's mission with a loss on the opening day, before the breakthrough for victory on Tuesday morning.

But in a game where every ball is a competition between batsman and bowler, it's more about playing the game than winning.

"Cricket's not very strong in Poverty Bay at the moment, and we've only got about 30 players to choose from," he said. "Otherwise they only have about five or six all year."

They also get to play "proper rules", in a week which gives everyone a chance over matches ranging from 30 to 50 overs-a-side.

Three decades ago it was a case of a team of boys simply getting into a van and heading for Hawke's Bay for a few days' cricket. In 2021 there are several gazebos of parents and family. "I'm about fourth-in-charge," he reckoned.