Twelve-year-old cricketer Matthew Hocquard has joined an illustrious group after his Ray White Wanganui Year 7 representative side won four of five matches at the annual Hawkes Bay Cricket Camp.
Played at the Riverbend Camp venue, the Wanganui lads comprehensively beat an Auckland Universities X1, the well-fancied Hutt Valley team, Napier Tech and the Morrinsville Piako Stormers, while going down narrowly to Western Bay Of Plenty who only squeaked home with two balls to spare.
Hocquard was named in the tournament paper team and was also honoured with the tournament's MVP tag after scoring 53.2 points from the batting, bowling and fielding statistics. He was eight points clear of his nearest rival.
Despite their tender age, the Wanganui team is a hardened bunch of a dozen players, eight of whom came from the successful Huntley School team just back from taking second place in the National Primary Championships in Christchurch. The balance was made up of talented youngsters from Fordell and Wanganui East schools. Having recently beaten the Wanganui Year 8 team convincingly, these boys were all about cricket and went about their business in Hawkes Bay with a take no prisoner attitude.
The tournament has been going since 1979 and has been the breeding ground for a number of first class and New Zealand cricketers with Ross Taylor, Jamie How, Jeetan Patel, Jacob Oram, Jesse Ryder, Mike Mason, Ben Stokes (England), Scott Styris, Kane Williamson, Doug Bracewell, Trent Boult, Sara McGlashan and Sophie Devine to name a few - we can now mark Matthew Hocquard down among this illustrious crew.
