Waitakere Junior Cricket

If you’re feeling hungry and are in the neighbourhood of Mitre 10 in Lincoln Road or Westgate please stop in and support our U15 Boys fundraising for a cricket camp in the Hawke’s Bay.

Player of the Day for the U11 Blue Aces was Ethan Ball. Ethan continued the good batting form we've seen time and again since before Christmas, top scoring for the Blue Aces against a tough Cornwall outfit. He also fielded sharply and picked up a wicket while bowling. Well done Ethan and all the Blue Aces!

A great final game of the season vs North Shore cricket club for the Tigers. NSCC had us under the pump in the first 10 over and some poor fielding from our end kept them in the game. But the second 10 was an entirely different story. The boys picked up their game and the Tigers were hungry to finish the season off in style.

We restricted them to 111 in the end with Akshay and Henry getting two wickets a piece.

We batted like a team possessed and ended up with 178 with Harrison scoring 44 and Henry 35.

Man of the match performance from Henry to cap off a great season.

We finish up with a table topping 12 wins and 2 losses. Great season boys.

Today's Auckland Cricket Association Girls U13 Tui grand final was played by Howick Pakuranga Brave and Waitakere Cricket Club. Tui lined up against the unbeaten HPCC U13 Brave at the formidable home venue of Pakuranga’s Ti Rakau Park.

Howick Pakuranga boast to have over 800 boys and girls turn out in the various junior competitions each week and the Pakuranga MP Simeon Brown’s instrumental contributions to Auckland's transport Eastern Busway has transformed the clay-base (Kikuyu) Ti Rakau Park into a louchous green/brown bowling green. Winning the toss and with little due in the outfield, Tui chose to bowl.

Soon the Tui would find themselves wanting as the opening batters for the Brave found the middle of the bat and testing the conservative 35m boundaries. Tui would also soon discover the fiscal holes of a National finance minister Nicola Willis’s climate-friendly transport budget, with patchy turf-improvement and the late March drought creating chasms in the outfield.

Despite clinical field placements, supported by roaming coaches on the boundary and the Brood of experienced Rutherford College tournament expatriates, almost every ball cannoned into shins or the upper body and trickled past the boundary cones.

One by one, the Tui Matriarch came to the bowling crease and one by one would leave in tears. The best delivery of the day sailing over the long on boundary for six.

At the 10 over mark, HPCC Brave had mounted the highest half way total conceded by the Tui. Notable bowling in the first 10 from Evie Burton held the Brave to 97/1 at the half-innings break.

Enter Alice Shepherd. After relenting the gloves, Alice took the ball for the 14th, 18th and 20th overs. Ava Page-Wood taking up the gloves with only one over under her belt would also leave the field unscaled. Consistency and accuracy began to cost the Tui as the Brave strike batters felt ball on willow and finished up with 176.

Despite the daunting total, Tui felt the chase surprisingly achievable given the trueness of the pitch and speed of the outfield. The Brave had other ideas as the Tui lost wickets from consecutive full toss deliveries in the 2nd over. Alice would keep the Tui in the chase with an unbeaten 23 off 13 after coming to the crease at no.4. And despite going at 9’s and 10’s for much of the game, the Tui chase dissipated. 21 coming in the last over was not enough and the Brave supporters erupted into celebrations, winning by 19 runs.

Great first season of hard ball cricket, as a fellow coach I’m inspired by the passion and determination of these young ladies. What will the future hold, let's just wait and see.

Rhys was a very well deserving Player of the Day for our final game of the season. He has come on in leaps and bounds this year with his bowling gaining pace and accuracy. Well done Rhys.

Player of the Day (22 March) for the U11 Blue Aces was Nathan Stein. Nate top scored for the Blue Aces this week and took one wicket while bowling and held on to take a screamer of a catch at mid off. Congratulations Nate, and all the Blue Aces.

Player of the Day (15 March) for the U11 Blue Aces was Dylan McCool. Dylan was part of a great Blue Aces performance in the field taking 3 wickets for 20 runs, including a sharp caught and bowled. Well done Dylan and the Blue Aces.

Tough game today for the boys. We started the game well in the field with two direct hit run outs and some great fielding but sadly we fell away and let them get away with some easy runs and extras. Our batting started well enough but we struggled to find the boundary regularly and that put added pressure on the batsmen to keep up the run rate required unfortunately losing and snapping a 11 game winning streak. Player of the day went to Madhav who bowled a good line and also batted solidly, well done Madhav .

Looking forward to finishing a table topping season on a high next week.

Arjun exemplified a great player on Friday. Despite an injury to his lip experienced that afternoon he picked himself up during the game, particularly in the field where he displayed some great game awareness and catching. He showed great persistence and resilience - ending with a big smile although it was probably still hurting, ka pai Arjun.

Special mention for Zain Mirza (WCC U15s Dragons) for his great innings, and best score, of 94 runs from 57 balls during Rutherford Junior Boys’ game against Westlake Junior Boys Green on Saturday. Well done Zain!!