Having driven down from Tauranga I was looking forward to an enjoyable day at The Willows. When I was nominated as Willows skipper for the day, I had plenty to do.

After winning the toss and electing to bat I found I had plenty of volunteers to fill the top of the order and settled on Tim Harrison and Callum Hill to open. These two put on a 68 run stand with Tim top scoring for the game with a patient and well constructed 54 runs before being run out. Callum scored 27 and apart from Graeme Inglis with 29 and Brad Doody with a very quick 15, all other batsmen struggled against a very good Southland Boys’ bowling attack. The young men stuck to their task throughout the innings and never let The Willows truly dominate with the bat. All six bowlers used were economical and B Andrews especially was the pick, with well deserved figures of 4/37 off nine.

So 193 was 20-30 shy of where I would have liked, but I had plenty of bowling depth to call on. After an early wicket both J Ng and J Diach batted well and at 77/2 I thought Southland Boys’ were in with a real chance, however we had a happy knack all day of picking up wickets at crucial times. A Tait with a hard hitting 34 gave us a scare but we eventually had Southland Boys’ all out for 163. Frank Noster (3/37) was our star bowler, well supported by Fraser Hawes, Fraser Sheat and James D’Arcy, each with two wickets.

At the conclusion of the game Geoff Allott and Brad Doody chatted to the boys for 30 minutes and I am sure that both the experience of the game and that talk will have been a great learning opportunity for all the boys.

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