Northland began their representative season with a win in the warm-up match against Counties but new player-coach Ewen Thompson said there was still plenty of work to do.
A strong, well-balanced Northland team batted first at Cobham Oval yesterday, scoring 217 before dismissing Counties for 189.
"We didn't fire on all cylindersbut we kept up a good attitude all day and we're only going to get better and it was good to get over the line when we didn't have any real noteworthy performances," Thompson said.
"It was our first hit-out though and our first weekend on grass, so I was very pleased that the guys were able to hang in there and get over the line because a win's a win."
He said Jake Phillips 1/26 off 10 overs was the best bowling performance of the day for Northland and he frustrated the Counties batting line-up when they needed to score runs to keep up with the required run rate.
Several of Northland's batsmen got starts but none of them pushed on to record big totals, with Brad Wilson, batting at three, top scoring with 36.
Whangarei Boys High School players Henry Cooper and Ben Williams repaid the selectors' faith in them by scoring 35 and 33 respectively in the middle order, while Thompson scored a useful 21 batting at seven.
Northland's opening bowling attack of Kevin Forde and Richard Atkins was suitably hostile and got them off to a solid start, but again nobody really stood out apart from Phillips.
