The Pink Report

Pete Powers Up

A few weeks ago, Peter McGlashan had every right to be peeved off. Like the rest of the Yahoo!Xtra Northern Knights, he’d been in tiptop shape heading into this season after the squad collectively took their fitness to a new level during the off-season - which is saying something because fitness trainer Jason Wheadon already had them in terrific physical nick last season. All the sweat flying off the brow was part of the group ethos to push themselves to an even higher standard of cricket this summer.

With the first game approaching, Pete was fighting fit and raring to go. So, Murphy’s Law, what should happen but one of those random injuries that have nothing at all to do with fitness. A ball fractured the middle joint of the middle finger of his right hand while he was stumping up in club cricket for Waiuku. Those breaks are painful enough on a physical level, but mentally it must have been worse: off the team went, charging into the first four-day fixtures of the fresh season while he was left behind to listen to the radio and twiddle his beaten-up thumbs.

Pete sounded remarkably sanguine about his bad luck and I’m sure that’s only because wicketkeepers are used to having their digits serially abused. Earlier this year he even headed into the 2010 domestic one-day semi-final with a broken thumb. This fracture was trickier, however; from what I understand, close to the joint and taking its time to set.

So it was good stuff when reports came through that he’d got through the Knights’ Twenty20 warm-up match at Mount Maunganui and was all set for the HRV Cup. I’d imagine that the finger was still a little bit dicey; more to the point, he’d had to forego a chunk of catching practice and time in the nets and that’s what really does your head in.

Now, just one and a half weeks later, he’s performed batting ballistics at the Basin Reserve, a key performer in Sunday’s emphatic HRV Cup victory over the Firebirds. It’s like he’s never been away - very impressive.

After bowling first in each of the previous three rounds, it was good seeing the Knights opt to bat first on a great deck in Wellington and get a full 20 overs under the belt. They didn’t disappoint, with Brad Hodge going for a big one in his last appointment in pink with the team. The pro came through again with 51 off 32, a total of 191 quickfire runs coming from his bat over his four games. He finishes his Knights service on top of the Mitre 10 MVP points table, officially the best performer in the country. Herschelle Gibbs and David Warner are going to have some fun trying to beat his impact and consistency at the top of the order.

Brad and Anton Devcich pumped up the run rate to eight, but when Pete came in at number six and started pummelling overseas pro Mark Cleary  - who opens the bowling for Victoria, the foot really went down. The run rate soared up into double digits, past 13. Pete was on a sixes splurge, hitting two consecutively off Cleary and three for the over. BJ Watling was the one left twiddling his thumbs, stuck in single figures for an age at the non-striker’s while Pete kept on swiping big, clean boundaries. Towards the end he had a strike rate of 225; when he was run out off the last ball of the innings, he’d scored 66 off 31 balls. If the Stags’ show-stopping Kieran Noema-Barnett (wow, 57 off 18) hadn’t blasted the fastest 50 in HRV Cup history on the same afternoon, it would have been the innings of the day.

Wellington had a few good overs with the bat, and were assisted by too many extras, but they never got near the required run rate of 13-plus. Trent Boult, Brent Arnel and Brad Hodge all got wickets with their first delivery and by the time Bradley Scott got two wickets in two balls, the Firebirds were done for. Another four HRV Cup points in the pink swag-bag and, since the victory was much more emphatic than the Aces’ last-ball win over the Wizards, it’s the Knights who are now back at the top of the table with the superior run rate.

In addition to the big fitness push, this winter Pete also joined Kane Williamson in seeking out the batting tutelage of Martin Crowe. Martin’s big on encouraging good batsmen to trust their instincts and believe in their natural game without incessant technical tinkering, which can destabilise confidence. The advice seems to be working a treat for Pete. While the wicketkeeper-batsman was smacking fours and sixes around the Basin, the bulldozed BLACKCAPS and a couple of their selectors were thousands of feet in the sky aboard an aircraft bound to Auckland from India. The Knights-Firebirds match wasn’t televised, so they won’t be catching a replay of Pete’s innings. I trust they will be reliably informed that he was back to his best - or maybe even better.