Hollie Armitage carried the Central Hinds through to the final of the women’s Super Smash T20 competition in New Zealand, her fabulous 78 off 50 balls at the top of the order the difference in victory over Northern Brave in Hamilton this morning.
Northern Diamonds captain Armitage won the player-of-the-match award in the semi-final Eliminator after she underpinned an unassailable total of 151-5 with 10 fours.
It was her highest score of the competition and her side’s highest total. They have set up a final meeting with Wellington at Eden Park in Auckland on Sunday (11.30pm Saturday night UK).
“I was seeing the ball pretty well,” said Armitage. “A lot of credit to Tham (Thamsyn Newton, with whom she shared 107 for the second wicket) for building that partnership and taking the pressure off me.
“But all in all, it was nice to get some runs on the board, and the bowlers backed it up perfectly.
“When I first played, I knew the pitches would be a bit bouncy and I’d have to adapt. Luckily, today it paid off for me and I’m happy that we’re going to be making the final.
“The girls are amazing – they’ve made me feel welcome. They’re a fantastic group, and it’s going to be an amazing experience going to the final.”
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com. Hollie Armitage in action for the Diamonds last summer.
Meanwhile, Armitage’s Diamonds team-mates Leah Dobson and Lauren Winfield-Hill have also been in action over in Queensland.
Dobson continues to play state cricket for the Gold Coast Dolphins, and she hit a fine 69 off 59 balls from number three in a 50-over win over Ipswich women on January 14. Last Sunday, she hit 22 in a defeat against the Valley team.
Winfield-Hill, meanwhile, is playing for a Queensland state side who are in contention for silverware in the Women’s National Cricket League 50-over competition.
The Fire are second in the seven-team table with 31 points and six wins from 10 matches, three points behind Tasmania. Winfield-Hill and co have played a couple of games more than the majority of their rivals.
Each team plays 12, with the top two teams qualifying for the late February final. Winfield-Hill has posted scores of 48, 11 and 21 in her last three innings.
George Hill has made an impressive and winning start to his short spell of club cricket in New Zealand, where he is playing for the Weedons club in Christchurch.
Hill has helped his club win four T20 matches from four in the Canterbury Country Cricket Association Premier T20 competition, and he has contributed in each of them.
The Yorkshire all-rounder helped Weedons to back-to-back wins on January 13 over Cheviot and Oxbrook.
In the first, he returned 0-10 from three overs with the new ball before hitting 53 not out off 31 balls from number three in a successful chase of 85, achieved by nine wickets inside 10 overs. In the second – a 49-run win over Oxbrook, he smashed 84 off 54 balls in 133-6
Last Saturday, Weedons beat Ohaka by six runs. Hill returned 3-21 from four overs in a successful defence of a 148 total.
Today, Hill hit 38 and returned 2-5 from two overs in a 115-run win over Peninsula Harbour, them successfully defending 189-5.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com. George Hill has made an excellent start to club life in New Zealand.
Dom Leech, Matthew Revis and James Wharton continue their spells of grade cricket in Australia.
Revis returned the standout performance of the trio earlier this month, claiming five wickets in a two-day defeat for Gold Coast Dolphins against Ipswich in Queensland Premier Cricket. That return included a first-innings 4-41.
Matthew Fisher, meanwhile, is in India with the England Lions team.
He claimed an excellent 4-65 in the first innings of a the first Test draw against India A last week, though he is not involved in the ongoing second Test – also in Ahmedabad.
Yorkshire captain Shan Masood is potentially one innings away from reaching a significant career milestone – 20,000 runs in all senior cricket.
Pakistan Test skipper Masood has returned to domestic action in his homeland following a Test series defeat in Australia either side of Christmas.
The 34-year-old left-hander posted scores of 32 and 34 for the Ghani Glass team in a three-day win over the State Bank of Pakistan in the President’s Trophy Grade-1 competition.
That has taken Masood to a total of 19,944 runs in all first-class, T20 and List A cricket since debuting in late 2007.
That is broken down to 10,744 runs in first-class cricket, 5,384 in List A and 3,816 in T20s.
Picture by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images. Shan Masood in action for Pakistan during their recent Test series in Australia.
Former Yorkshire fast bowler Jared Warner has made a seamless return to the club in a coaching capacity, says his England Physical Disability head coach Ben Silver.
Warner, 27, is back at Headingley as a high performance pathway coach.
He was released by Gloucestershire as a player in September – three years after joining them from Yorkshire at the end of 2021.
Wakefield-born Warner’s coaching journey has already included setting up his own business with close mate Matthew Waite, Cutting Edge Cricket, which they set up during the Covid lockdown in 2020.
He has since done some work with England’s Physical Disability squad and has travelled to India with them as an assistant coach for their five-match T20 series, which starts in Ahmedabad this weekend.
Silver is the head coach. He is also a high performance pathway coach at Yorkshire. And he said: “Jared started at Yorkshire right at the end of the summer, the start of the winter.
Picture by Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com. Jared Warner bowls against Lancashire in the 2020 Bob Willis Trophy. That was his last summer as a Yorkshire player.
“He moved from playing to coaching, but he had been assisting with the (England) Physical Disability team since last winter. It’s nice to have him in India.
“He’s fantastic. I think he had a bit of an exit-plan from playing, which started last winter, where he wanted to make sure that he had a number of things on the go.
“Everyone knows that your playing career is not going to last forever, and Jared is very pro-active.
“He started with some volunteering work with the PD squad whilst he was still playing, and he did such a fantastic job that we brought him onto the staff in the summer.
“He then started working in the Disability Premier League with the Hawks, and they won the final in September.
“And when he was released by Gloucestershire, the job at Yorkshire in our pathway had come up. And he’s fitted into that role really nicely.
“He’s got a great relationship with players across both the girls and boys pathway. He’s done a lot of work with the fast bowlers.”
Yorkshire are heading to Wellington CC in Telford this summer to take on Shropshire on Sunday July 21.
That is the venue for the 50-over National Counties friendly, which the Vikings will play in as their warm-up for the Metro Bank One-Day Cup, starting four days later.
Shropshire announced the news earlier this week by looking back 40 years to when the county beat Yorkshire in the first round of the NatWest Trophy in 1984.
On that occasion, the clash took place at the St Georges Recreation Ground in Telford, Yorkshire failing to chase down a 60-over target of 230 – bowled out for 192.
Shropshire chair John Hulme: “That was a wonderful day for the county, and it’s still remembered with great affection by those who played, as well as those who watched the match.
“It was an outstanding achievement for Shropshire to beat a strong Yorkshire side including Geoff Boycott and three other England cricketers.
“We now look forward to welcoming Yorkshire once again 40 years later for what promises to be another special day for the club. They remain one of the very top counties in the country. Their playing record over time is second to none.”
Picture courtesy of Shropshire CCC. Wellington Cricket Club, Telford.
Joe Root was this week named in the ICC’s Yorkshire-centric Test team of the Year for 2023.
The Yorkshire and England batter was named in the select eleven alongside Stuart Broad, who retired last August against Australia at the Oval.
The team was selected by the International Cricket Council, based on performances from January 1 last year to December 31.
Four more of the eleven have in the past represented Yorkshire; Dimuth Karunaratne, Kane Williamson, Travis Head and Mitchell Starc.
In the said period, Root scored 787 runs in eight Test Matches against New Zealand, Ireland and Australia, including two hundreds and five half-centuries.
Picture by Stu Forster/Getty Images. Joe Root celebrates his wicket of Yashasvi Jaiswal caught and bowled this morning in Hyderabad.
His two hundreds were 153 not out in the first innings of the second Test against New Zealand at Wellington in February, which England lost en-route to a 1-1 drawn series, and 118 not out in the first innings of the opening Ashes Test at Edgbaston in June. England also lost that one on the way to drawing the series 2-2.
Root is currently in India with the Test team, and is playing in the ongoing first Test at Hyderabad alongside Jonny Bairstow. Unfortunately, Harry Brook has returned home for personal reasons.
