A dismal first innings by South Canterbury, even considering the worst of conditions to bat gave North Otago the momentum and important first innings points in their Hawke Cup encounter at Centennial Park in Oamaru over the weekend.
Put in to bat with overcast conditions and a greenish pitch, South Canterbury quickly lost wickets and with only No 4 Liam Beck last out for 25, Jake Naylor 13 and Dinesh de Silva 11 making double figures the total of 77 was still well short of a par score.
In reply South Canterbury looked like holding North Otago to a small lead when they had them 106-6 and then 123-7 but the tail wagged with Francois Mostert holding an end up on his way to a top score of 45no as North Otago for through to 175, a lead of 98 runs.
For South Canterbury, captain Sam Carlaw led the bowing taking 4-37 off 20 overs while Dinesh de Silva put ina huge spell to be miserly with 3-41 off 17 overs.
However with a big job ahead to try and first pass the North Otago score and try and avoid an outright, or better still get into a position where we could chase an outright, there was a sigh of relief when Joe Williams and Carlaw managed to get SC trough the 8 overs to stumps on 15 without loss overnight.
Day 2 began and wickets began to fall as both openers and Beck were gone with the score only on 54, still 45 in deficit.
However when Jake Naylor was joined by Glen Drake the pair set about knocking those runs off. Naylor fell for 42 but by then SC had a 6 run lead, and with an attacking mindset from Drake who brought up his fifty off 49 balls SC went to lunch 41 runs ahead and thinking positively about setting a declaration target.
After lunch Drake lost some of his momentum as he wasn’t getting to face as many balls, and eventually was out for 72 when the total was 71. However de Silva then picked up from his century the previous week as he posted his fifty, and with Phil Lill, Ben Watson and Stan Mair all getting into double figure, South Canterbury eventually were all out for a much improved 250, leaving North Otago a target of 153 for an outright victory, and more importantly 38 overs for SC to try and dismiss North Otago.
A fired up Stan Mair bowlinbg pretty quickly soon got into the North Otago batsmen on his way to a haul of 5-55. North Otago looked vulnerable at 28-4, and again at 50-5 but then the experienced head of their skipper Mostert closed up shop as they decided to settle on their first innings points and not go for the outright.
South Canterbury picked up one more wicket, but the other bowlers couldn’t get the extra breakthroughs needed and North Otago finished on 111-6 when play ended and took the 8 first innings points thankfully.
SCOREBOARD NORTH OTAGO vs SOUTH CANTERBURY HAWKE CUP 2017
Below is a gallery of photos from the match.
