By Jim Allnatt
Howick Pakuranga cricket celebrated the end of a huge season at the Auckland Cricket prizegiving winning four major trophies.
The Marie Raos Ray White HPCC Premiers won both the Hedley Howarth Cup for the Two Day Championship and the Jeff Crowe Cup for the Limited Overs competition as well as finishing third equal in the T20 Tournament.
Coach Alan Hunt was also recognised as Club Coach of the Year, well-deserved recognition of both his coaching and man management skills.
The high point of the night was the announcement that Howick Pakuranga won the Overall Club Championship as the best performed club right through the grades ranging from the children right up to premier men and women.
This is the second year the club has won this trophy in succession and this result can only be down to the many hours of hard work by volunteer coaches, managers and committee members backed up by an excellent coaching programme.
Some players had outstanding seasons and were recognised at the senior club prizegiving:
Daniel Young took the Premier Batting trophy with an impressive 899 runs for the season and a top score of 135.
Donovan Grobbelaar with 379 runs and 32 wickets won the All Rounders Award and Danru Ferns with 39 wickets had an outstanding season.
Natasha Van Tilburg scored the most one day runs with an aggregate of 619 runs for the season and was also recognised as Premier Women’s Player of the Year. Alyssa Bowden took 26 wickets to win the award for premier women’s bowler.
There were also four winners in the Auckland Cricket Club section: Natasha Van Tilburg became the first Howick Pakuranga Premier Woman to win the historical Nessie Hammond Cup for batting in Premier Women’s grade.
The Premier Women also won the Stringfellow Cup as the most improved premier team in their grade.
Andrew Morrison also had a stellar season winning the prized S.R. Speed Trophy for most dismissals in premier cricket – 39 plus 686 runs for the season. Morrison also won the Howick Pakuranga Club Cricketer of the Year with those stats.
The other recognition by Auckland Cricket was the Dick Shortt Memorial Trophy for the most positive cricketer of the year awarded to Brian Barnard who scored his runs at a tremendous rate and we lost count of the number of sixes he hit during the year.
Finally no club can run without the volunteers who give so much time and Howick Pakuranga has many. The Peter Guest Memorial Trophy went to Claire Scragg, Nicola Troughear won the Presidents Cup and Ted Waters the Frank Hughes Memorial Trophy. All three awards were well-deserved and their names join an illustrious list already on these trophies.
The club’s success has been recognised by the number of players who play for Auckland representative sides. This season Skye Bowden became HPCC’s first member of the Auckland Hearts and the club believes there are more to come next season. Jamie Brown, Glenn Phillips, Colin Munro, Danru Ferns and Matt MacEwan and Mitchell McClenaghan were all members of the Aces. We believe there may be more to come from our premier side as well in the near future.
