Cricket: Hawke’s Bay cricket’s big revenge in Rangiora

The Hawke's Bay men's cricket team on Sunday after securing the Hawke Cup in Rangiora with a first-innings win by 224 runs in a three-day challenge against Canterbury Country. Photo / HB Cricket

Hawke’s Bay again holds two of New Zealand’s oldest and major challenge sports trophies at the same time after the men’s cricket team hammered Canterbury Country in a Hawke Cup match in Rangiora at the weekend.

The end came as the holders conceded at lunch on Sunday, the third and final day, after managing just 129 in reply to Hawke’s Bay’s first innings total of 353.

Realising the match was out of reach, Canterbury Country decided against following on, the match being officially declared a draw, but with Hawke’s Bay claiming the cup with a first-innings triumph by 224 runs.

It was a crushing payback a year after one of Hawke’s Bay’s most humiliating days in cricket, when the boot was on the other foot in November last year as then-challengers Canterbury Country hammered then-holders Hawke’s Bay by an innings and 29 wins in dismissing the Bay for under 100 in each innings in Napier.

There’ll be nightmares for North Canterbury which won the toss and chose to put Hawke’s Bay into bat first, with the visitors then batting all of the first day on Friday to be 226-6 at stumps.

Most-capped Hawke Bay player Angus Schaw ended his captain’s knock at 61 early on Saturday, opening the way for two particular heroes.

The last moments of Hawke's Bay's Hawke Cup win, as left-arm spin bowler Jayden Lennox wraps up the 129 runs with a bag of 6-26 off 35 overs. Photo / HB Cricket

Toby Findlay, batting at No 9, hit 2 sixes and 10 fours in an innings of 75 to blow-out the target for the holders, and change-bowler Jayden Lennox, with his slow left-arm orthodox spin, backed it up by breaking the back of the home-side innings late on Saturday and ending with a remarkable 6-26 off 35 overs, including 22 maidens.

The win means that Hawke’s Bay now simultaneously holds both the Hawke Cup, for cricket minor-association supremacy, and provincial rugby’s Ranfurly Shield.

Winning separate challenges just six weeks apart - each with a Central Hawke’s Bay player as captain - it repeated the achievements of 2020 when Hawke’s Bay also won challenges in both arenas.

The trophies are two of the oldest in New Zealand team sport, the Ranfurly Shield having been first presented in 1904 and the Hawke Cup first appearing in 1910. Hawke’s Bay has successfully challenged for the Ranfurly Shield seven times, and in wins and successful defences ranks third behind only Auckland and Canterbury, and the weekend’s win was the Bay’s 12th successful challenge for the Cup, a record.

The weekend’s challenge had been postponed since February, when Hawke’s Bay was unable to make the trip south because of the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle.

It will now face up to four challengers in January-March.