The Pink Report

Hoodoo Gurus

Well they do say good things take time. It may have been almost a decade (that’s 20 home games) since the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights last won a first-class match at Seddon Park, but now that the spell is broken, the guys can revel in a satiating victory.

Not only was the win a right whalloping of their opponents - by 241 runs, but it was against the very same bunch that, at the end of last summer, snuffed out the Knights hopes of grabbing the Plunket Shield. That match was painful and messy, but now the boot’s on the other foot - with the Canterbury Wizards the ones in pain at the bottom of the points table today.

In fact, it was the Knights’ highest-ever winning margin against Canterbury (take that!). But more satisfying still is that it was a match in which the Knights had to work hard through the middle - to pick themselves up mentally after a fast and furious first innings that saw no batsman in either side crack 50. Nek minnit? The Marshall twins nail it with 134 for Hamish (hitting the ground running, as ever) and James very nearly making a ton as well in the second dig. From there, the road was all uphill for the visitors and the hoodoo evaporating under the steamy Hamilton sun by the hour.

Graeme Aldridge played a familiar leading hand, too, hitting the deck hard and was rewarded with 6-41: his best ever first-class figures, and 6-111 for the match. In the process G went past the 250-wicket milestone, his 254 now placing him third on the all-time ND list, just a whisker behind Joey Yovich and with Cliff Dickeson’s record likely attainable for the consistent spearhead.

Combined with Brent Arnel’s five-for in the first innings (8-84 in the match), it was a satisfying game all round and for once - or should I say at last - the words of the team song, which has some unmentionable lines about what fate opponents’ body parts should suffer at Seddon Park, rang true. 

The shame is the side now has to down tools, as it were, right when they’re on a first-class roll. When teams get to this stage in the season, they almost draw a mental line under the Plunket Shield as the four pre-Christmas rounds are completed and the squads move into a steady diet of one-day and Twenty20 cricket for the next 10 weeks. The Plunket Shield doesn’t resume until February 17, when the four-day team will reassemble in Gisborne. 

Meantime, there’s not a lot of time to revel in the Seddon glow, with some big Ford Trophy matches coming up at the Mount, if the weather gods play ball. But you’ll be forgiven if the eyes linger a bit over the rather fine-looking Plunket Shield points table after completion of the pre-Christmas rounds: