First-time winners collect major trophies at Central Districts Cricket Awards
Two first-time winners have collected the major trophies at the 2023/24 Central Districts Cricket Awards.
WHITE FERNS pace bowler Rosemary Mair takes home the premier Central Hinds Player of the Year trophy and the Hinds’ Super Smash Player of the Year award.
The 25-year-old seamer from Hawke’s Bay went from strength to strength across the season, highlights including the rare feat of taking four wickets in four balls at List A level (sometimes called a double hat-trick) in the Hallyburton Johnstone Shield.
It was the Hinds’ first ever hat-trick, and Mair went on to star for her team in the Dream11 Super Smash as well with a brilliant return of 4/5 [four wickets for the cost of five runs] off four overs in the national Grand Final against the champion, Wellington Blaze — earning her WHITE FERNS recall. Mair missed the CD Cricket Awards ceremony as she’s currently with that WHITE FERNS squad in the current Series against England.
Fellow seamer Blair Tickner was named Central Stags Player of the Year for the first time, after having shown his class and heart in all three men’s formats across the season — even as he worked his way back to top gear with a remodelled bowling action.
When he wasn’t intimidating batters, Tickner provided valuable lower order and career-best contributions with the bat in the Plunket Shield and Dream11 Super Smash, and came within just one run of a List A one-day career best as well.
The big paceman was also named The Ford Trophy Player of the Year and, for the first time, the Central Stags Players’ Player of the Year - an award decided by player votes after each game, taking into account both on-field and off-field contributions to the team.
Other major awards saw CD’s newest international representative, Mikaela Greig (Manawatū) honoured as both the Hallyburton Johnstone Shield Player of the Year and the Hinds’ Players’ Player of the Year. Greig also received the latter award last season.
Wairarapa’s Emma McLeod celebrated her 18th birthday with both the John Turkington Forestry Central Hinds Emerging Player and the CD Women’s Under 19 Player of the Year trophies. McLeod captained Masterton’s St Matthew’s Collegiate to the national Venus Cup title during the summer, and scored the first two centuries in the history of that NZC tournament, a season in which the dashing batter also made her Dream11 Super Smash debut.
Venerated veterans were also in the limelight. Doug Bracewell (Hawke’s Bay) is the men’s Super Smash Player of the Year while Plunket Shield captain Greg Hay — who last week announced his retirement during the Stags' final match of the season — was a popular winner of the Plunket Shield Player of the Year trophy.
The loyal legend from Nelson finished as one of the top three first-class run-scorers nationally in his swansong season, scoring 643 runs from eight matches, at a stellar average of almost 50.
Hay's two first-class centuries this season included a brilliant 176 in his final, 10-hour innings, and both of those hundreds led to innings victories for the Stags. Had the Stags won just one more game, he would also have become the first Stags captain to lift the Plunket Shield three times — the only line missing from the fairytale ending.
After a special presentation to mark his service to the green baggy cap, Hay received a lengthy standing ovation as the evening concluded at Napier’s Conferences & Events Centre.
GREG HAY ‘One of the CD Greats’
CD CEO Lance Hamilton said that Hay deserves to go down as one of CD’s greats.
“It’s been a pleasure to witness Greg’s career over a long period of time.
“To see the hardship he overcame in his career, to see the resilience he showed to come back, and go on and achieve what he was capable of achieving, was special.
“He retires with some elite statistics, including being just one of four players in New Zealand to score 7,000 first-class runs for a single Major Association team [the second for CD, after Mathew Sinclair].
“It speaks not only of his ability, but of his loyalty which is exceedingly rare in the modern professional environment.
“Loyalty not only to the Central Stags and Central Districts, but to Nelson for whom he was still playing Chapple Cup on Manawaroa Park this year.
“Greg’s loyalty speaks volumes about his character, and that character and work ethic will stand him in good stead to excel, moving forward in his life. They are the internal drivers.
“To have seen over the last week in particular, the outpouring of love and respect that his fellow teammates have for him, that speaks volumes about what he has brought to the game and the dressing room in his time.”
Inaugural award caps special season for CD Māori
Earlier, the 2023/24 CD Community and Pathway awards included the inaugural presentation of the CD Wāhine Māori Player of the Year to Wairarapa’s Georgia Atkinson (Ngāti Kahungunu).
The Central Hinds leg-spinning allrounder led from the front as she captained CD Māori to the inaugural NZC Wāhine Māori title at the start of the summer. After the ground-breaking T20 national tournament in Hastings, Atkinson went on to represent Aotearoa Māori in January’s international Pacific Cup.
Rising star and Central Districts U17 captain Jacob Cotter was one of the three top runscorers at NZC’s national men’s U17 tournament this season — as well as the gun fielder for his CD side, with 243 runs from six innings at an average of 60, including an unbeaten 88 not out.
The Napier Boys’ High First XI skipper from Taradale Cricket Club earns the CD Men’s U17 Player of the Year award for the second successive year.
Manawatū and CD U19 rep Jett Donald-Charnley received the trophy for CD U19 Men’s Player of the Year for the first time after having been one of the top four wicket-takers at this year’s NZC Men’s U19 national tournament.
And a fellow promising Manawatū wicket-taker, Palmerston North Girls’ High student Penny Lovegrove, won the CD U17 Women’s trophy for the first time, fresh off helping her school qualify for the next Venus Cup Nationals by defeating the summer’s formidable reigning national champion, Masterton’s St Matthew’s Collegiate, in the CD Finals.
Central Stags Jack Boyle and Brett Johnson took home the Chapple Cup and Hawke Cup Player of the Year trophies respectively.
Both men played a big part in Hawke’s Bay’s impressive season sweep of the Chapple Cup, Furlong Cup and Hawke Cup trophies for Inter-District cricket, with Boyle adding the Chapple Cup trophy to the Hawke Cup Player of the Year award that he won last season.
Hawke’s Bay locked away the Hawke Cup for the winter after having seen off all four challenges from around the country this summer. The Hawke Cup Player of the Year trophy encompasses the Hawke Cup, Furlong Cup (Zone 2 Hawke Cup qualifying competition) and Zone 3 Hawke Cup matches (Nelson and Marlborough) played by CD District Associations.
Hawke’s Bay also claimed the women’s Mike Shrimpton Trophy for inter-district cricket after its biggest season yet, but it was Nelson and Central Hinds pace bowler Anna Gaging’s standout performances that won her the Mike Shrimpton Trophy Player of the Year award for the second time in three years, at the age of just 22.
Rounding out the CD community awards, Hawke’s Bay’s Glen Walklin was named Umpire of the Year, and Feilding’s Duncan Mitchell, a CD member of the NZC National Scorers Panel, received the CD Scorer Recognition Award for excellence in scoring.
