Easts and Karori to meet in club one-day final

CRICKET WELLINGTON MEDIA RELEASE

Friday 22 January 2010

Easts and Karori to meet in club one-day final on Monday

The 2009/10 Premier and Senior Wellington club cricket one-day finals are being played at the Petone Recreation Ground this Monday, 25 January, from 11.00am.
 
Top qualifier Karori meet defending Pearce Cup champions Eastern Suburbs in the Premier final and Petone-Riverside meet the Karori second XI in the Senior limited overs final.

Easts captain Lance Dry says the lure of winning the club one-day final adds extra motivation for his team who this year are striving to win their ninth consecutive Wellington Premier cricket title.

“Winning the one-day competition is not something we have traditionally targeted,” Dry said. “Our focus has always been on winning the Pearce Cup at the end of the season – but when you make a final you want to win and the fact that we haven’t won this for a while adds an extra carrot.” 

Easts last won the club one-day final in 2005/06, beating North City in a rain-reduced match at the Allied Nationwide Finance Basin Reserve. They were beaten finalists two seasons ago, losing dramatically to Naenae Old Boys on the last ball of the match after losing their last five wickets for eight runs.

Dry said that taking out the one-day title would provide a great opportunity for younger guys at the club to gain exposure to a higher level of cricket at the National Club Championships at the end of the season, and he also singled out former Wellington Firebirds one-day opening batsman Stephen Murdoch as a dangerman for Karori.

“Overall they are a well-balanced side and will be hard to beat, but Stephen Murdoch is a key player. If we can contain him or get him out early we feel we’ll have a good chance.”

Karori captain Simon Baker is upbeat about his club’s chances in both finals: “As a club we are thrilled to have our top two teams playing alongside each other on the same park in a final. From both a playing and club administrative perspective that’s satisfying for us and is a reflection of all the hard work we have been putting in at Karori.”

Baker said the Karori Premiers are looking forward to the chance of reversing last year’s one-day final result after also finishing the round-robin as top qualifier last year and then losing to Hutt District in the final.

“Although we will be missing three first choice players to representative duty – Harry Boam and Tom Blundell with the New Zealand U19s and Andy McKay with the Firebirds – we have a stronger team this year and are confident of going one better than last season. Easts however have a selection of quality players such as Scott Golder, Lance Dry, Danny Evans and Rick Joseph in their line-up, and their winning record over the past decade is to be respected so we will have to play at our best to beat them.”

Easts beat Karori by 41 runs when they met in the one-day round-robin earlier this season, while Petone edged out the Karori seconds  by 8 runs in a high scoring match in their  previous one-day clash before Christmas.

Ironically Easts and Karori will meet on Saturday in another one-day match, at Karori Park, in what was originally scheduled as the second day’s play of the round two set of two-day matches. All club cricket was cancelled last Saturday due to wet weather.

The teams are:

Premier final

Karori: (from) Simon Baker (c), Stephen Murdoch, Matthew Davis, Hamish Templeton, Simon Allen, Vinnie Ward, Chris Spring, Sunnie Chan, Jarred Sewell, Harry Wright, Lee Edwards, Marc Ellison

Easts:  Josh Brodie,   Nathan Cameron, Jeremy Dean, Lance Dry (c),  Danny Evans, 
Chamika Gajanayaka, Scott Golder, David Holt, Ricky Joseph,  Niranjan Naguleswaran,  Jamie O'Donnell. Phil Parker

Senior final

 arori: (from) Matthew Atkin (c), Hamish Wright, James Hill, Neil Martin, Stefan Allen, Guy Simm, Nick Hearn, Tom Logan, Tom Gibson, Jono Sole, Fletcher TeAika, One more TBC

Petone-Riverside: (from) Mark Hewson, Tom Hyslop, Leigh Kelly, Richard Chatfield,

Sam Blandford. Shane Adair, Jacob Stirling, Scott Bonner, Nick Ward, Josh Joseph, Andy Corliss, Kelvin Snell, Jayson Davis 

ENDS

Steven White | Communications Specialist

Cricket Wellington

PO Box 578, Wellington

ddi. 04 801 2859 fax. 04 384 3498 mob. 021 241 4703

www.cricketwellington.co.nz

© Scoop Media