CRICKET - Momentum builds for special charity cricket match

This weekend's Allens Celebrity Cricket Match and Charity Auction is a result of a collaboration of ideas, with the cricket part considered a bit of a coup.
Or rather it was an idea that morphed from a suggestion into something special - far outstripping the original plans of Allens director John Monteith.
Monteith was never a cricketer and in fact played tennis growing up. But he has a head for business and he knows auctions.
So when the idea was raised to bring an expected crowd of up to 4000 people to Cobham Oval this weekend he quickly backed it, knowing that North Haven Hospice will be the winner.
The hospice is a long-standing charity the real estate company has supported but it wasn't until after last year's Show Time fundraising dinner that Monteith decided to try something different to help the hospice.
"I was talking to Ros Martin (fundraising manager at North Haven Hospice) and I mentioned the idea of perhaps doing a charity auction - I had thought about doing it for a few years, I just needed the right charity," Monteith said.
"Originally it was going to be a casual summer evening auction only and as we thought the new cricket pavilion had that kind of English summer feel we were looking for and I was having a chat to Brian Johnson at the radio station and he suggested that maybe we should look about having a celebrity cricket match as well.
"The idea immediately connected with me."
Enter Kamo Cricket Club stalwart Murray Coop, who started working at Allens at about that time.
"Originally it was going to be celebrity cricket match with just a few cricket names and local and national celebrities but it then turned into this awesome game between ex-Black Caps and former Northland players and that was a bit of a coup, but maybe we should say Coop," Monteith laughs.
"With his cricket connections he could reach people I could never reach and it snowballed from there."
Eventually Coop got to talking to Kerry Walmsley at the New Zealand Cricket Association who offered to organise a Black Cap Masters XI, while he and Barry Cooper organised a Northland team.
Coop is thrilled with the line-up they have come up with for the Twenty20 match.
"The only players who aren't first class players or former first class players are current Northland captain Ben Cochrane and ex-All Black Gary Whetton, who was a former premier club cricketer in Auckland, and Brad Chard who is another top Northland player whose dad died at North Haven Hospice not so long ago ... so he was jumping out of his skin to be involved," Coop said.
Monteith is just happy that the event will appeal to a wider range of people.
"I have been in real estate for over 25 years and this would have to have been one of my easiest sales ever. So many people have been affected by the work the hospice does and it's been very easy to find genuine people who have wanted to help with the project," he said.
As well as the house built by Urbo Homes, there are 56 other items for auction, with the cricket starting at 1pm and the charity auction at around 5pm.
Northland: Bryan Young, Barry Cooper, Andrew Jones, Tim Anderson, Gary Whetton, Ben Cochrane, Brad Chard, Joey Yovich, Karl Treiber, Bill Fowler, Dean Potter.
New Zealand Masters: Mark Richardson, Mark Bailey, Shane Thomson, Justin Vaughan, Rob Hart, Simon Doull, Murphy Su'a, Lance Hamilton, Kerry Walmsley, Ewen Chatfield, Glenn Sulzberger.