Cricket: Northland girls take out ND tourney

Northland's secondary school team girls' cricket team defeated Hamilton by 33 runs on Friday.

Northland's secondary school team girls' cricket team are top of the Northern Districts heap after holding their nerve to defeat Hamilton by 33 runs on Friday.

The win saw the team finish the round robin tournament with four wins and a loss but earned the title because they had defeated their Bay of Plenty hosts on Monday by six wickets. The Bay were the only other team to complete the Tauranga tournament with a four and one record. The team's manager Dave Lobb said the match against Hamilton wasn't all plain sailing.

"Hamilton were looking good at one stage, they were 60 without loss chasing down our score of 150, and we thought we were in a bit of trouble but then we turned it around and bowled them out for 117," he said.

Caitlin Phillips picked up three wickets but Lobb said strike bowlers Tia Saunders and Paige Golightly were the pick of the bowlers for the T20 tournament.

Northland skipper Olivia Lobb's form with the bat was one of the reasons the team did so well. Lobb junior was only dismissed once in the competition - on the final ball of their innings against Hamilton - and can boast an average of 252 for the week, with a high score of 87 no. Lobb said while his daughter batted well, he was more impressed with her captaincy.

"She ran things well and there was good team spirit throughout the tournament, they got on well and there wasn't some of the factionalism that we noticed among other teams," he said.

Lobb has been selected for her second successive season in the ND under-21 team and Golightly will join her this season.

The team also beat Waikato Valley and Poverty Bay and their only loss was a seven wicket defeat by Counties-Manukau on Tuesday.

Many of the team won't have much of a chance to relax before travelling to Palmerston North as a part of the Whangarei Girls High School team to contest the national secondary school finals this week.

The team beat Kamo High School and Kerikeri High School to earn the right to represent Northland and then defeated Pukekohe High School in a one-off contest to take their place in the ND finals. They beat Gisborne Girls, St Thomas Aquinas College, Hillcrest High School and Waikato Diocesan School to qualify for the national finals.

Auckland's St Kentigern College and Christchurch's Rangiruru College are the favourites to win the title but after this week's efforts in Tauranga, Whangarei will be backing themselves as at least an outside chance of winning.