Injured Curtis calls it quits

Longtime Wairarapa representative Sam Curtis has retired from all cricket.

A constant in the province's premier side for most of the past 14 seasons, Curtis, 31, has succumbed to a series of injury problems, the most recent of which involves a couple of bulging discs in his back.

A broken hand, a broken finger and tendinitis in a knee and achilles have also troubled him at various stages over the past 12 months.

"It's been a hell of a year, the body has pretty well broken," Curtis said.

"I think it's telling me it's time to call it quits."

Throughout his long stint with Wairarapa Curtis has been one of their most prolific-scoring batsmen and a more-than-handy spin bowler. He also had a decent span, something like five years, in the captaincy role.

The Lansdowne club player never quite achieved his goal of playing a first-class fixture for the Central Stags but he did get to captain their B squad and he has played minor league cricket -very successfully - in England during our off-season for the past three years.

His retirement from active play will not, however, mean the end of Sam Curtis in Wairarapa cricket, far from it in fact. He is "busier than ever" in his role as Cricket Wairarapa's community co-ordinator, coaches the Wairarapa under-18s and manages the Wairarapa under-14s.

Coaching, in particular, is something he enjoys and he has ambitions to take up that role with the Wairarapa senior men's team in years to come.

Meantime, Seth Rance went for his first run in something like five months on Tuesday night.

It was a big moment for the Wairarapa and Central Stag pace bowler who has been off the cricketing scene since having an operation to repair a tore tendon in his foot in early July, a process which saw him wearing a cast and later a moon boot.

"I was rapt, it (the foot) was a bit sore but nothing too bad," Rance said. "It was just nice to get mobile again, I seemed to have been limping around for ages."

As fate would have it Rance's prolonged break from the game could hardly have come at a worse time.

It meant he not only had to sit out Wairarapa's pre-Christmas matches but also put him out of the reckoning for those being played over that part of the season by the Central Stags.

His past form for the Stags in all versions of the game would have made him a serious contender for selection again, even more so when a spate of injury hassles saw their pace bowling resources thinned considerably.

Rance has been encouraged though by the fact that Stags management have kept in close contact with him with bowling coach Anthony Sharp providing him with a conditioning programme which he hopes will have him back at the bowling crease early in the New Year.

Before that, however, Rance intends to play on the local club scene for Greytown but will initially restrict his involvement to batting, a sphere of the game in which he also has an impressive record.