The King’s 1st XI have enjoyed considerable success at The Willows in recent years. I was determined we would field a strong side with plenty of youth and depth in batting and bowling.

On what began as a pleasant, windless day, Willows openers Fraser Buckley and Kyle Burns made a solid start, both passing 20. Then followed a mini collapse until Chris Mugford restored our fortunes with 35. He was supported well by Charlie Finnie and Andrew Nuttall. Unfortunately we failed to bat out our overs and were dismissed for 187 — 30 to 40 runs shy of a really competitive total. Still the old cliché applied: we had the runs on the board and they had to get them. We also had some inside knowledge from Kyle Burns and Kyle Hastie, two King’s old boys playing for us.

Our opening bowlers Nawid Mohammady and Hastie both bowled tidy opening spells beating the bat outside off repeatedly without success. However, changes at both ends resulted in immediate wickets with Micah Campbell clean bowling their opener then Charlie nicking off their captain (and NZ Under-19 rep) Beckham Wheeler-Greenall for a duck. Beckham scored a matching winning hundred against us last year so we were delighted that he was not going to repeat that in this game. By the drinks break we had secured two further scalps.

Their other opener Marno Potgieter continued to bat well after drinks bringing up his 50 in good time but on 62 he got a peach of a ball from Micah and skied a catch to Charlie who took it well at cover. Micah bowled out his 10 overs and finished with the superb figures of 5/35. Kyle Hastie, who bowled his first four overs into the wind, came back with the wind after Micah, and bowled with serious heat. He clean bowled the final two wickets to end the game with King’s 42 runs shy of the target.

It was a great win to start the season, but more importantly an excellent game with both sides contributing with bat, ball and in the field.