Harry Millar 69
An almost full strength South Canterbury U19 side took on the might of Canterbury Country at Aorangi Oval on Sunday. The only player missing was Ben Watson on SC Senior Men’s duty in Oamaru while captain Glen Drake was allowed to play for South Canterbury U19s along with Nathan McNicol.
South Canterbury won the toss and decided to bat first in what was setting up to be a very hot day but after a rollicking start at more than a run a ball the first wicket fell with the score at 36. This started a mini collapse as a series of poor shots or bad calling saw wickets falling every 10 runs and suddenly at 68-4 on a batsmens track things did not look so good.
This brought Josh Dick and Harry Millar together and the pair went about resurrecting the innings with Millar mainly in the attacking role and Dick in the support role and they added 85 runs for the 5th wicket before Dick was out for 19.
Millar continued his good innings bringing up his 50 off 45 balls and adding more runs with Tom Pavletich before a rush of blood saw Millar forfeit his chance of a century when he was out stumped for 69. However he had batted really well and put his side in a position to be able to dominate the scoreboard and with the tail all getting into double figures eventually South Canterbury were dismissed for 240.
The only negative, being that they didn’t use up all their overs, something th coaches will hope they can remedy at tournament.
In reply Canterbury Country couldn’t establish a big partnership as wickets fell every 20 runs or so and the introduction of the captain Glen Drake to the attack soon had the opposition struggling as Glen finished with 5-33 from his 9 overs (and a run out) to make up for his poor day with the bat.
Josh Dick picked up 2 wickets from his 10 over spell while Nathan McNicol and Alex McDuff grabbed one apiece after some tight spells.
Next up it is the Regional Tournament in Christchurch from Dec 10 – 14.