Cricket: Visitors' 'stage fright' sees Hawke's Bay roll Wairarapa for 29

Brett Johnson, 100 not out and heading for the field, where he took 5-22 to end the Furlong Cup match with Hawke's Bay, beating Wairarapa by an innings and 134 runs. Photo / Ian Cooper

Cricket fortunes swung from one extreme to the other as the Hawke's Bay men dismissed Wairarapa for 29 on Saturday – a week after being dismissed twice themselves for under 100.

Thought to be the second-lowest score against Hawke's Bay, it effectively put the Bay back on the horse after farewelling the Hawke Cup via losing by an innings and 29 runs to Canterbury Country on the same Nelson Park Oval a week earlier.

In a Central Districts Furlong Cup match at the weekend, Pay Excellence Hawke's Bay replied to Wairarapa's demise with 323-8 declared, before dismissing the visitors for 160 in its second innings and winning by an innings and 134 runs.

But there's a story behind every result, with Wairarapa losing Black Cap Seth Rance to illness in the last 24 hours before the game, and learning just before the game started on Saturday morning that Hawke's Bay had overnight picked up Black Cap Blair Tickner.

Even Hawke's Bay selector-coach Christie Van Dyk didn't know until after 8pm on Friday, with Tickner wanting a weekend's cricket before being released by Central Districts to join the Black Caps for a Twenty20 series with India starting on Friday, and including a match in Napier next Tuesday .

Van Dyk reckoned the visitors succumbed to "stage fright" amid the double blow of losing Rance, then seeing another Black Cap looming from the bowling end against them.

He claimed Wairarapa opener Cole Freeman and first-drop Jared Van Deventer each for no score, as the visitors nose-dived from two without loss to 2-4 and then 11-7, effectively determining the course of the match in the first hour.

With all six Hawke's Bay bowlers claiming at least one wicket each, Tickner finished with 2-6 off seven overs, and fellow opening bowler and Central Districts representative Ben Stoyanoff with 2-2, also off seven overs, six of them maidens.

The home side batted the rest of the opening day, and its innings included 104 to opener Jack Boyle - who nabbed three sixes and 11 fours - and an unbeaten century, with five sixes and nine fours, for No 6 bat Brett Johnson.

Johnson then clean-bowled four and had one trapped leg-before-wicket in claiming the last five wickets in the 22 last runs of the match, finishing with 5-20 off 10.3 overs as the Wairarapa second innings crashed from a struggling 138-5 to be all out, ending the game well short of having the Bay bat a second time.