This match was played on a very good pitch on yet another extremely hot day, so typical of the 1997-98 summer. The Willows won the toss and made the only logical decision to bat. Our side on paper comprised a solid top order, vulnerable middle order and a more than useful tail and how this proved to be true.

The loss of a quick wicket failed to halt steady progress with the bat and fine innings from Neville Perkins, Gary Thomson and John Reid at the top and from Andrew Nuttall at the bottom saw us through to a very competitive total of 265. The school team hopefully learned a lot, especially bowling to John Reid, the former New Zealand left­ hander who scored 6 test centuries during his career. Although not in his best form he fought through the early stages of his innings and then started to flow into those cover drives and deft placements on the leg side which we all remember so well. Unfortunately, the ‘geriatrics’ in the middle order fully lived up to their reputation. The Chief Executive of New Zealand Cricket failed to improve on his earlier innings at The Willows (zero) whilst the Captain surprised himself by doubling the score at his earlier turn with the bat (1). Dayle Hadlee, obviously seeing that there would be very little spin in the wicket cunningly pulled a hamstring after reaching 19, which of course also gave him some red ink alongside his name!

Christchurch Boys’ High School made a brave effort to reach the Willows total, but unfortunately, they lost wickets at regular intervals and no one was able to put together the really big score necessary to give them a win. H.McCarthy was the best of them with an aggressive 54 and a number of others showed plenty of ability, but were unable to withstand the pressure of aggressive fast bowling by Stu Roberts and Wade Cornelius plus the accurate spin of Andrew Nuttall.