Cricketers attitude and commitment questioned

The attitude and commitment of some of Wairarapa's most promising cricketing talent has been questioned by a leading administrator.
Former long-time Central Districts representative Dermot Payton is now convener of selectors for the Wairarapa senior men's teams and he admits to huge frustration at the number of players who made themselves unavailable for the Wairarapa B squad which met their Manawatu counterparts in Palmerston North on Sunday.
"One or two had fair enough excuses but there were four or five who cried off because of reasons which really couldn't be considered in that light," Payton said, adding that the whole idea of the B side was to give the region's best youngsters the chance to develop their skills and, at the same time, prove they had the ability to foot it at a higher level.
"One or two had fair enough excuses but there were four or five who cried off because of reasons which really couldn't be considered in that light."
"It's an important team in terms of development and if players aren't prepared to see it that way then they can hardly expect to be persevered with, can they?" he said. "You put the line through their names fairly quickly because without commitment they don't deserve to be there."
The number of unavailabilities for Sunday's game was such that four members of the Rathkeale Cricket Academy were drafted into the Wairarapa Bs, three of them at late notice.
Original plans were for just one Academy player to be included because that's how many Wairarapa are able to utilise in the major representative games this season and Payton paid a tribute at the willingness of so many to fill the gaps. "Their keenness is something others would do well to copy," he said.
A conservative batting approach cost Wairarapa dearly in their Palmerston North encounter.
Put in by Manawatu on a wicket which gave the bowlers some assistance early on they got through to 44-1 after 10 overs but about half of those runs came from extras, mostly wides.
And the pace of the scoring became even slower over the following 20 overs with just 22 runs being scored in that period.
Payton said it was a case of batsmen going into their shell and not being prepared to play their shots even when the ball was there to be hit with some venom.
"Conserving wickets is important but we probably took that a little bit too far," he said. "We needed to be more positive in the way we played, we let the bowlers get on top."
Just five of the Wairarapa batsmen managed to get into double figures as their team struggled through to 152 in 49.1 overs with opener Alex Treseder top scoring with 19 and Joe Hull coming in at number eight and finishing on 18 not out.
The century marker for Academy in a club game the previous day, James Brocklebank, again showed signs of good form before being dismissed for 12 while Brock Price made 14 and Robbie Anderson 11.
Manawatu B hit up the winning runs in 37 overs, thanks in the main to an unbeaten third wicket partnership between B Grant, who was 69 not out, and J. Cunningham, who was unbeaten on 36.
Payton was satisfied with the Wairarapa bowling and fielding effort although had a couple of difficult catching chances been taken they may have well made a closer game of it.
All three Manawatu B wickets to fall were taken by Dean van Deventer, who finished with 3-39 from his 10 overs, and there was an economical spell of nine overs from Academy's Andy McElnea, whose nine overs cost just 17 runs.