Hearts blog
2012/13
Hearts Blog 5/1/12
Back home to Melville Park to play Wellington who were pushing for finals spots in both formats. We'd received excellent news of Katie Perkins being selected in the White Ferns World Cup Team to travel to India and Madeline Green selected as a non-traveling reserve. Awesome stuff you two!
Vic was still unavailable to play this round because of her knee so this meant that Sarah was in behind the stumps and Katie P took the captaincy reins.
In the T20 we restricted them to 121 for only 3 wickets. All of the bowlers chipping in. Even Alan Alan Alan and Steve! Sam and Megs went out to open the batting and smashed the Wellington bowling attack around the park putting on 59 and 40* respectively, Megan bringing the game home in a nail biting finish off the second last ball!
The next day, a first of the season, an awesome player of day prize was up for grabs - a Moro, a peg, a piece of gum, three choc chip cookies and a banana all donated by different people. Everyone was ready to fight for the coveted prize. Also Sarah made her one day debut for the Hearts. The bowlers started us off in style! Holly again picking up an opener LBW in the fist over. Hols, Rowdy, George, Grubs and Loz each picked up 2 wickets bowling Wellington out for 110. Again, Megs and Sam went out and took it away from Wellington. Megs with 30 and Sam finishing it off with Katie P on 55* and 12* respectively. Sam ended up with the player of the day prizes.
Day three brought rain, games of smack your own head snap, cups, naps, bedtime stories about unicorns and their special friends and searching the internet for jokes to tell in the stretching circle. Another player of the day prize consisting of a chocolate from Grubs, a cookie time cookie, a nandos voucher, an expired McDonald's voucher and a priceless whiteferns SCG all access pass with a lovely picture of Tiff was up for grabs. We went out to field in a reduced game of 42 overs each. They got to 188 off their 42 overs. We pulled it back after them being 1-150 in the 30th over! Arlene with PB figures of 4 for 34 off her 9 overs! Shot ADK!
We then went out to chase, Sam again in the runs with 64 and Katie P done by a roller on 29. Unfortunately, we came up short but we were still able to come away with our heads held high. Our one day record of 8 wins (3 with bonus points) from 10 matches reflects a pretty awesome season so far. But the job's only half done. We're at Melville for the one day final against Canterbury this Sunday, 13 January. Please come down and support us where we'll be giving it everything we've got to try and defend our one day championship title! Come on girls - just one more win for the trophy!
Hearts Blog 30/12/12
The Hearts headed down to Lincoln University in Christchurch to take on Canterbury. Dean wasn't able to come with us as he was off at Terenzo Bozone's wedding! Nice Deano! On the shuttle to the airport Lauren was most upset after Santa had left her absolutely no presents at Christmas!
Another sickly player this round - Gag ate something bad the night before and was throwing up throughout the flight (much to the delight of Sam who was lucky enough to draw the short straw for the seat next to her!) add to that the screaming children sitting right behind us, it made for a lovely flight! Our shuttles were waiting for us when we arrived but we were then advised that we had to wait for the Wellington team to arrive to travel together with us to Lincoln. Fun! So after a long start to the day we eventually headed out to Lincoln Green for our T20.
We didn't get the round off to a great start. Mads managed to dislocate her finger - well Tiff did when she smashed the ball at her in warm ups. But Mads is a tough cookie and just had it popped back in, strapped and was straight back to take the field! We managed to restrict them to 132 but fell short only reaching 109. Roz was the pick of the bowlers only going for 9 runs off her 4 overs. Lauren and Perky the best with the bat - 30 and 23 respectively.
We got a good nights sleep (Sam getting almost 10 hours!) and we were geared up to keep our one day winning streak going as we headed out to the beautiful Bert Sutcliffe Oval! Unfortunately Megan had injured her leg in the T20 so Hols came in for her and Gag's tummy still wasnt quite right so she was 12th man. Our one day winning form continued as Vic and Sam started us off with another solid opening partnership and then Mads came in and gritted through a pretty tough batting period for another significant partnership with Sam.
We ended up on 239 with Mads getting a hard fought 35, Vic with a beautiful 42 (gosh she's hitting it well isnt she?!) and Sam carrying her bat for a PB unbeaten 95* . Blue zinc applied, the bowlers and fielders were able to soak up the pressure (even after Vic injured her knee and had to give up the keeping gloves to Mads - Mads was chomping at the bit, practically ripping off Vic's pads before she'd even said she was going to leave the field!). We successfully restricted Canterbury for a 7th straight one day win also securing our guaranteed final spot! Special mention to sickly Gag who had to come on and run boundary to boundary for the last 18 overs (we had to keep her on the boundary so she could throw up over the rope if she had to!) Arlene and Rowdy Cox picked up 2 wickets each and Loz with PB figures of 3 for 38 off her 8 overs.
On the third day, the line for the physio was two teams long! Megan had to come back into the team for Vic with what she was told at the time was a dislocated patella and Roz was out with a torn achilles so Gag came in for her which meant that our super star coach had to white up and run drinks! On Lincoln No. 3 we went in to bat and pretty much had a complete collapse with only Lauren offering much resistance. She played a very mature innings of 31 which was invaluable in ensuring we made it to 3 figures! We were eventually bowled out for 102. We still knew that anything could happen and we sure as heck weren't going down without a fight! Holly got us off to the dream start getting their opener LBW first ball of the innings! Needless to say, we were fired up!!! When we took the 4th wicket when they were only on 66, we knew it was going to be tight and we could tell they were worried!
When Grubs took the amazing diving catch for that 4th wicket, she injured her neck which meant that Tiff had to come onto the field as a sub. Straight into the covers she was too! Unfortunately, we only managed to get them 5 down but we were proud of the way our bowlers performed. Holly picking up 2 and Gag, Loz and Rowdy with 1 each. We got to have one last Lincoln meal before heading home that evening. The food was actually really yummie! Much improved from what most of us remember from Development tourney! It was really great catching up with our former coach Trins and she even made us our favourite Rocky Road which was Ah maze ing as usual! Thanks Trins! Also thanks to Mr and Mrs Down, the Barriballs and Collette (Sam's aunt...who actually had to get whited up when Tiff took the field) for coming to Christchurch to support us.
Hearts Blog 10/12/2012
Round 3 of our campaign was completed at the Home of Auckland Women's Cricket, Melville Park, over the weekend which made for a lot less off field shenanigans (since we weren't staying together) but we still managed to have a lot of fun! It was great having the full squad of 16 players together to take on Northern Districts!
Again, the story of our T20 season, rain. Although because it was only showers on Friday, we managed to get a full 20 overs in, despite starting late. All the girls got stuck in with the heavy lifting dragging the covers off and then on and then off again.
We sent them in and got off to a dream start with Loz getting a direct hit run out in the first over. Then they kept tumbling, they lost another wicket in the 4th over, then one in the 5th, two more in the 6th (at this point we had them 5 down for 19 runs) and we knew they were wishing that the rain would come back! But it didn't. Nic Browne was their only batter to spend time at the crease which got them to 68 all out on the last ball of the 20th over. The bowling card makes for some spectacular reading: Roz 1 wicket for 13 off her 4 overs, Arlene 2 wickets for 13 off her 4 overs, Megan 2 wickets for 8 off her 4 overs and George 1 wicket for 8 off her 4 overs. With the first four bowers doing such a fantastic job, this game will go down as a milestone for Paula "the Great" Gruber. She recalled that this is the first match ever that she has played and hasn't been required to bowl! Great stuff!
In response, we cruised to victory, only requiring the top 5 and 15.5 overs to get our first points in the T20 comp. Megan top scored with a handy 28 - yip that was over 40% of ND's total!
Maddy baked her beautiful specialty birthday cake which we got stuck into after the game (belated for Grubs for the weekend before). Elite athletes we are! Then we all headed home to spend the night in our own beds.
We arrived back on Saturday and the rain was still hanging about. We were padding up in the changing room getting ready to set when a shriek from Captain Vic comes from the far corner of the changing room. She jumps frantically and runs out the door screaming, "There's a mouse! There's a mouse!" which goes crawling into her gear. Deano to the rescue (being the only man within screaming distance) comes in and grabs Mr Mouse with a cloth shopping bag to take it outside, only to discover that it has slipped out of his grasp somewhere between picking it up and taking it outside! The rest of the batters got ready in a hurry and ran out just in case it returned!
We put on our total of 222 again, with Sam scoring a PB for the Hearts of 69. Katie P carrying on her form with another half century, 52. Megs with 37 off 39 and Vic also chipping in at the top with 28.
ND came out and really looked to start off slow. Chasing a score requiring a run rate of 4.5, their openers had a 99 run partnership but it took them 30 overs. This meant that their remaining batters had to come in and score at a run a ball from the outset, and while that doesn't sound too hard with 9 wickets in hand, our bowlers again were brilliant!!! We gave them nothing, well next to nothing.
The pick of the economy rates were: Holly 3.25, Arlene 3.43, George 3.30 and Grubs, making up for her non-bowling yesterday, the pick of the bowlers taking 1 wicket for 26 runs off her 10 overs (an economy rate of 2.60)! ND ended up 14 runs short after their 50 overs and were only 4 wickets down!!!! What, you say?! I know! It really is a credit to all of our bowlers who are all doing an amazing job! So that made us 5 from 5 half way through the one day comp.
Again, in celebratory fashion, we had cake! A nice chocolate cake AND we were spoiled by Deano's Jane who made the most amazing Raspberry and White Choc muffins! As Tiff would say, YUMMIE! We again chipped in for the team syndicate lotto ticket and decided that we'd do $1,000.00 Secret Santa gifts if we won.
Mr Mouse came back as we were leaving the changing rooms - so we were all up on the seats as it was running around the floor. Suebo had a broom and some water and Gag had the towel ready to grab it, until Mr Mouse came running straight for Gag and then she dropped the towel and ran! They finally trapped it in a box and freed it into the Melville grass!
In the changing room before the match on Sunday, everyone (especially Vic and Megs) got stuck into a performance of "I want it that way" by the Backstreet Boys. Their dance moves were amazing! And the way Megs could hit those high notes...priceless! So that got us all in a great mood for the game.
ND went into bat and we did our thing. We executed another 3 run outs - our fielders having flashes of absolute brilliance more often than not (let's not talk about the whoopsies that we seem to contract sometimes). ND managed 223 from their 50 overs. Arlene again the most economical with the hard task of opening into the wind (and what a great job she's doing!) only going for 16 off her 6 overs. Gag picking up 1 for 37 off her 10 overs and Sam rolled her arm over with 1 wicket for 27 off her 7 (and yes, she did throw in one of her special double bouncers! Leggies are hard you know?!).
We then went out to chase, confident in the fact that we knew we could get the total. Vic and Sam headed out and while dodging (and not so successfully dodging) bouncers most of the day, they notched up a 143 run partnership! This broke Auckland's record against ND which was held by Rebecca Rolls and Michelle Lynch set back in the 2001/2002 season! Vic with a third half century for the season ended up on 64 and Sam making 61. Maddy and Katie P then came out and made fast work of the total putting on a quickfire partnership of 80. Katie with an unbeaten 26 and Mads with a classy innings of 48 not out off 46 balls meaning that we only needed our top 4 batters and only 43.5 overs.
Following the game, we all headed up onto the Melville hill to chat to friends and family and thank them all for coming to watch. Again, in high spirits, we celebrated with cake! This time it was for Sarah's 21st! Tiff insisted that it was a 21st tradition that you have to do a skull out of your shoe! And Sarah being the great sport that she is, filled her brand new shoe to the top and chopped it back! Awesome Sarah! We also had a quick initiation game of charades from Tiff and Deano. Let's just say that they did very well trying to make us guess "Platypus" and "Cocker Spaniel". As you can imagine, it made for some serious laughter!
Finally, just a quick mention to Katie P and Tiff who headed off to Aussie yesterday with the White Ferns for the Rosebowl series. All the best Katie P! And all of the development girls - Arlene, Sarah, Gag, Loz and Alex (and Deano) go down to Lincoln University in Christchurch on Wednesday to defend their title at the National Development Tournament. Bring it home for the 5th year in a row! We know you'll all do us Jafas proud! Catch you next time!
26 November, 2012
We’ll here we go again! Welcome to the 2012/2013 Hearts season. We know we’ve got a lot to live up to after last season and all the girls are ready to give their all to do it all over again.
We do have to introduce some newbies to the Hearts. With our highly successful co-coaches of last year moving on, Maia to the Halberg Trust and Trins moving back down to Christchurch (and together with that, taking on the top job of the White Ferns Coach – all the best Trins!) we welcome Haidee Maree Tiffen MNZM as new coach of the Hearts.
Tiff’s Wikipedia page speaks for itself – former White Ferns player and captain, her NZ career spanning over 10 years, amassing 2919 runs over her 117 ODIs – practically cricketing royalty – in 2011 she even received the honour of becoming a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to sport. It’s fairly safe to say that she’s reasonably qualified for the job! We also welcome Deano “Smooth talking” Flyger as a permanent fixture to the squad – Dean comes on as assistant coach (as well as still taking on the head coaching job of the Auckland Women’s Development side who will be going down to Christchurch just before Christmas to defend their title and hopefully notch up a fifth consecutive championship!)
It started off bright and early, a nice 4.30am wake up call for some of us on Friday morning as we had to meet the shuttle at Eden Park at 5.30am to take us to the airport for a 6am check in. 3 of us were at the shuttle as we headed off at 5.30am SHARP from Eden Park, luckily, poor Roz raced in behind the shuttle as we were leaving and managed to wave us down! Close call for Roz and adding to that, she boarded the shuttle with a bucket in hand, as in, she’d been up all night vomiting (no not self-inflicted…)! She assured us all that it wasn’t contagious and that she’d be right by the next day so off we went!
We arrive at the airport where our trusty manager Suebo was there to meet us, she wouldn’t be travelling with us as her hubby George had been quite ill the week before. We all hope he’s much better now Suebo. Fortunately though, as Suebo didn’t travel, that meant we could take 13 players down with us which was a real treat. Georgia aka GAG aka Fat Amy arrives and tells us that she also pulled into Eden Park just as we left and missed us! Doh! What we failed to realise as well was that a certain vice-captain of ours who shall remain nameless was also meant to catch that shuttle! But her alarm didn’t go off as it was still set to Sydney time from her recent trip with the NZ Emerging Players! Tut tut. So Miss VC came running into the airport well after check-in time (after illegally parking her car somewhere – and then asking her flatties to come and retrieve it later that day!) but luckily we managed to squeeze her through! Phew! So all 15 of us eventually boarded the connecting flight into bumpy Wellington and then from there into the little plane down to Invercargill to take on the Otago Sparks.
With such early flights, we arrived before lunch time and our T20 match wasn’t scheduled to start until 4.00pm so we headed into the buzzing hub of Invercargill where most of us had Pita Pit for lunch. From there it was an afternoon of hanging around the hotel until we left for the ground, Queens Park.
It was overcast and drizzling when we started, not the ideal weather for T20 debutant Arlene “Teach me” Kelly aka Filly aka Nancy aka ADK and we scraped through to 111 off our 20 overs with Vic Lind and Katie P putting on 32 & 19 respectively as the only significant partnership of the innings. The rain “set in” at the change of innings according to the locals, however, we were back out there with a reduced game using Duckworth Lewis the Sparks needing only 86 from 14 overs. We knew it was going to be a tough ask and we knew we had to get White Ferns players Bates and Martin early if we were going to defend the modest total. No such luck as they went on to post an opening partnership of 75 in just 10.2 overs. So it was a pretty tough night on Friday, we all just had dinner in the hotel and then straight to bed to dream of a better result of the next two days!
Saturday proved to be much better, weather and result wise. Two one day debutants today, again Arlene and Regina Lilii who had only played T20’s for the Hearts before this round. Captain Vic winning the toss elected to bat on a good track and it paid off. Almost all of the batters produced the goods with 6 of the top 7 getting good starts and creating some good partnerships. Katie P the pick of the bunch with a PB for Auckland – an unbeaten 65 off 79 balls. We produced a great total of 221 meeting our target and ready to finish it off in the field.
Arlene started us off grabbing the scalp of Martin from her second delivery and from there it was all downhill for Otago. Bates put up some resistance but the spin twins George and Grubs did their thing taking 7 wickets for 46 runs between them. GAG with the second PB of the weekend with a 5 wicket haul for just 19 runs off her 10 overs. Amazing! We cleaned up the tail, George taking the final catch to seal the deal and had them all out for 117. Hearts win with a bonus point by 104 runs! Stark contrast to the day before.
With an early finish, spirits were high and the girls were ready for a bit of fun that evening. The hotel that we were staying in had a couple of weddings planned for that night, so we decided to join in on the festivities. We enjoyed a lovely pre-wedding dinner at the hotel restaurant where we partook in a round of Highs and Lows. We were all sporting our team fat pants and I must say we all looked stunning! We snuck in and witnessed a ceremony and everyone was in hysterics as the celebrant made mention of “Two Hearts becoming one”. We even managed to enjoy a bit of the cake and all of the unmarried girls were right there at the bouquet toss! It was a classic night that will go down in history as being one to remember for the Hearts. (I think we were lucky we didn’t get thrown out of the hotel!)
Everyone was up and ready to go on Sunday morning as we watched the Abs at breakfast. Again, a beautiful morning as we arrived at the ground and again went into bat (good work Cap). We had the smile chain going on and we were all teeth, ready to make it two from two in the one day comp! It was like de ja vu as the batters again did their thing with 6 of the top 7 all getting starts and putting on good partnership to get us through to one better 222 off our 50 overs. Megan “DJ Tron” Tremaine with the third PB of the weekend – smoking 50 off 60 balls. Also, awesome stuff by Holly smashing an invaluable 30 off just 14 balls to close us out.
Again, a similar story to yesterday with Martin going cheap early by a great nut from Holly and then Bates showing some form but a loose shot saw her paddle a full toss straight to Grubs at fine leg, again, sealing Otago’s fate. There was a bit more fight from their tail on Sunday and they pushed us right to the 48th over, but with crazy suicide running and 5 clinically executed run outs by the Hearts, they were always going to come up short – this time, only 18 runs short so a bit closer than we would have liked!
We all made it home safe and sound with Tiff leaving the pug nets rotating on the baggage claim – luckily Gee went back and saw them, otherwise, Tiff wouldn’t hear the end of it (she still won’t)! Although that fineable offence was nothing compared to forgetting to actually name the teams on Friday and Saturday in the changing room! Things to work on for next round!
So after the weekend we are firmly at the top of the one day points table with 9 points followed by CD on 5 points who we face next weekend in Masterton. CD lost Welly in their T20 this weekend too so we’ll be looking to capitalise on that get on the board in the next round of the T20 competition on Friday.
Hearts schedule
Hearts results
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