Payton pleased with progress

Selection convenor Dermot Payton was delighted with the progress made by the Wairarapa senior men's cricket side this season but says there is still scope for improvement.
Their first innings win over current Hawke Cup holders Taranaki in the last of their qualifying games in that competition last Friday and Saturday came as a surprise to most pundits but not to Payton.
"Honestly, I had a feeling they were on the verge of doing something special & that's the sort of progress they had been making," he said. "They were ready for a big one and they produced it."
Payton said batting first and posting a healthy first innings score of 328 had put Wairarapa in the box seat and allowed them the chance to dominate proceedings from then on.
"In two day games it's always important to get enough runs on the board at your first turn at bat to have the opposition under pressure, to create doubt in their minds," Payton said. "It puts you on the front foot and against a team like Taranaki that's where you need to be."
With skipper Sam Curtis making a magnificent 132 and his fellow opener Brad Edwards reaching 76 before being run out, Wairarapa got off to a flying start and while the only other knock of any real substance runs-wise was Jeremy Anderson's 33 the rest of the batsmen did enough to ensure Taranaki had a fight on their hands.
Payton described the Curtis-Edwards partnership of 172 runs as being "absolutely crucial" to the end result.
"Teams like Taranaki expect to get amongst the wickets early on and, quite frankly, they struggled to come to terms over that not happening," he said. "And the looser they got the more we prospered."
The Wairarapa bowling effort was also an impressive one with Taranaki losing five wickets before they had reached the 100 mark and finally being all out for 222, 106 runs in arrears of Wairarapa.
Payton said the message to the Wairarapa bowlers was to concentrate on line and length and give the Taranaki batsmen few opportunities to free their arms and, for the most part, they had done exactly that.
"It was a good pitch for batting so you weren't likely to get a lot of help there, accuracy was the key," he said.
Wairarapa batted a second time and had got through to 82-3 when play was called off early because there was no chance of an outright win to either side but Payton said Wairarapa was "more than happy" to take the first innings points.
"The fact was we had outbatted and outbowled them and that was good enough for us," Payton said.
Sunday's Chapple Cup limited-overs match between the two provinces, however, saw a different result with Wairarapa losing by three wickets despite setting Taranaki a difficult enough target of 266 for victory.
Payton said this was a game Wairarapa should have won but, as had been the case in other one-day encounters this season, they had failed to make the most of their chances.
"We had enough runs on the board to get the win but we loosened up in the bowling at a time when we needed to conserve runs and that made all the difference in the end," he said. "We got close but not close enough."
Payton is optimistic the bulk of this season's Wairarapa squad will be back on deck in 2008-09 and, if so, he is confident they will make an even bigger impact on the representative scene.
"They are still a young and inexperienced side and the scope for improvement is still very significant," he said. "If they stick together and are prepared to work hard over the winter months who knows what they could achieve. "Meanwhile, the season may be over for the premier side but for the Wairarapa B's it continues next Sunday when they play their Hawkes Bay counterparts in a limited-overs match at Queen Elizabeth ParkOval in Masterton.
It is a mark of the youthfulness of the senior A's that six of their squad are also in the B's which, to all intents and purposes, is a team made up of the region's most promising talent.
Jeremy Anderson will skipper the side and he will have with him James Adamson, Alex Treseder, Daniel Stoneley, Joe Hull, Brock Price, Johnny Samuel, Tom Adamson, Daniel Ingham, Willie Thomson, Choi Jackson and Robbie Anderson. They will have a fielding practice at the Sports Bowl at 5.30pm tomorrow.
For Ingham this game will provide the opportunity for him to continue the superb batting form he showed for Wairarapa College in their two-wicket loss to Academy in an Umpires Cup club match on Saturday.
The 14-year-old Ingham took control with Wairarapa College in deep strife at 10-3 and scored 125 of his side's 225. He was the leading light in a fourth wicket partnership with Joel Macklin (23) which produced 100 runs. Academy reached their target with eight wickets down with Ingham demonstrating his all-round capabilities by also being the best of the college bowlers.