A splendid Waitangi Day holiday welcomed us for The Willows annual fixture versus St Bede’s. The Willows featured six old boys who had played the previous season within the St Bede’s first eleven. St Bede’s won the toss and chose to bat then thought about it further and then decided to bowl. The change in heart wasn’t immediately rewarded as Paul Miller and Mike Newton-Vesty took the attack to the decent opening attack. After 16 overs, The Willows were cruising at 60/0 until Joe Bradley removed the openers in one over, both looking to up the scoring rate. As the ball aged the ability to start became harder and The Willows lost regular wickets to good tight wicket-to-wicket bowling. Harry Fitzpatrick and Joe Bradley both claimed three wickets apiece as The Willows failed to bat their fifty overs, bowled out for 167 in the 48th over.

Given the beautiful batting conditions the score wasn’t ever imagined to be enough so the captain asked for full, fast bowling straight at the stumps. The St Bede’s openers negotiated the first few overs easily enough but once Callum Curnow took his first wicket the game opened up for The Willows. On the strpke of tea, Callum Curnow’s third wicket was caught spectacularly by Taylor Irie at cover and at 3/34, The Willows were getting on top. After tea Curnow continued and zeroed in on the stumps, bowling the next five batsmen with blistering yorkers and good pace. No batsmen had any answers and St Bede’s slumped to 44/8 with Callum claiming all 8. Unfortunately for him Angus Hamilton mopped up the last two and St Bede’s were bowled out for 61. Overall the day belonged to Callum as he bowled all of his 10 overs straight and finished with figures of 8/21, a Willows record haul.