The Pink Report

Yo! What's Happening?

With an annoyingly long 15-day break between the end of the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights' Ford Trophy campaign and the resumption of the Plunket Shield, you might be forgiven for thinking it's gone all quiet on the northern front.

Not quite. To bring you up with the play, by way of some useful first-class preparation, Northern Districts A - packed full of Knights players, including Daniel Flynn, coming back to speed after his hip op, and Joey Yovich, back from concussion - has spent this past week playing their neighbourly nemesis Auckland A in the fair city. Auckland have been winning far too much of everything lately, so it was a nice turn-up for the books to see the ND A side get one over their second-string line-up, at least, in the four-innings match.

Auckland A made 392 in their first innings, underpinned by a century to Michael Barry, with 3-59 to Brandon Hiini and two wickets each to Brett Hampton, Graeme Aldridge and Anurag Verma - back from injury again, he got their number four Andrew de Boorder for a duck.  

Northern's first turn at bat wasn't quite so successful, with a flurry of starts but no one able to go on in the top and middle order despite a cracker of a deck. The top score was Daryl Mitchell's 55 not out, batting at seven, in an innings tally of 211/8, young Papatoetoe leg-spinner Ish Sodhi taking four-for (what's with all of these leggies all of a sudden?).

Auckland's second innings saw Tim McIntosh grab some valuable batting practice and score an unbeaten century before the Aucks declared at 152/2, leaving ND A a chase of 334 runs for victory. Which they duly took care of, Joey Yovich scoring 144 off 197 balls as an opener, backed up by Daryl Mitchell's 58 and a brisk final partnership between Jono Hickey (44 not out off 35) and Brett Hampton (51 not out off 36). Auckland's Richard Lane still managed a five-for however, and there will be a few concerns over lean times for most of the other batters and in particular getting Flynny back to his bat-blazing ways soonest. He's been missed this summer.

By the way, notice how as soon as we stop playing T20 and one-day cricket, the sun comes out and the rain goes away? The last fortnight has been the best weather we've had all summer across most of the Northern Districts heartland. Typical!

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Hamilton's second Hawke Cup defence (a three-day match) is underway today at their fortress of Galloway Park, providing another handy workout for our thumb-twiddling leading lights ahead of the business end of the Plunket Shield.

Wairarapa is the challenger this time around, and once again the Hamilton side is loaded with current or recent Knights - who will be doubly keen to front after a so-so beginning to the match. Hamilton won the toss and were 108/4 at lunch, with Mitchell Santner, captain Michael Dodunski, Anton Devcich and Brook Hatwell all already back in the pavilion, Keir Bettley and BJ Watling in at the crease with some hard work ahead of them this arvo, hopefully.

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But wait, there's more! Yep, even more highly competitive cricket is coming up in our region. Get your diary out and pen in these dates for Northern Maori's second season taking on the world. Quite literally. Last summer they played the visiting Cook Islands of course, and this season they're going to go head to head with the NZ-based Croatian team.

Here's the programme:

At Seddon Park, Hamilton:
Thursday March 22 (double-header)
Northern Maori v Waikato University
T20, 10am start.
Northern Maori v NZ Croatian XI
T20, 2pm start.
                       
At Smallbone Park, Rotorua:
Sunday March 25
Northern Maori v NZCPA
T20, likely to start at 2pm - to be confirmed.

The NZCPA (Cricket Players' Association) will feature a host of former and possibly current Blackcaps. Stay tuned as we bring you more details and announcements over the coming weeks about this exciting match for Rotorua.