The CENTRAL STAGS did everything but lift the Plunket Shield as they signed off on 2023/24 and the remarkable career of captain GREG HAY with a classy innings victory over the Otago Volts in Napier.

It was the team's second innings victory of the campaign, and in both of those matches, skipper Hay led from the front with a ton.

The last afternoon of the final match of the season saw LIAM DUDDING haul in his second first-class bag and new career-best figures of 5/35, among eight wickets for the match.

All images | MBUTCHER

Dudding finished with 22 wickets at an impressive 19.04 overall for the season, another career best for the Hawke's Bay pole-hunter - and among the top 13 bowlers nationally.

Teammates AJAZ PATEL and BLAIR TICKNER collected 26 and 25 respectively, while DANE CLEAVER's 41 dismissals not only comes in as the top wicketkeeping performance nationally by a country mile, but breaks KRUGER VAN WYK's Central Stags record for most dismissals in a first-class season.

Top batsman? The man himself, captain GREG HAY.

Hay was instrumental in his team putting 500+ totals on the tins three times this season - a first for the team.

Hay's swansong innings of 179 was a marathon effort of more than 10 hours across three days, and created a whole wave of statchat on its own.

He had also scored a century on the first day of the season, reaching 115 in Auckland.

Hay bows out with 643 runs from 13 innings this season, at a class average of 49.46.

It places him in the top three first-class runscorers this summer nationwide, after Dale Phillips (Otago Volts) and Gareth Severin (Wellington Firebirds).

The final round capped a frustrating season overall for his team, the Stags handing on the trophy to the Firebirds, and ending as the nearly-men of 2023/24.

WILL CLARK also enjoyed his final match with new career bests with both bat (66) and ball (3/54) while Tickner also achieved a career best unbeaten 46* in the tail - the elusive maiden 50 to be saved for another day.

Victory over the Volts was important to the Stags not only because it was the only fitting way to send off their skipper, but because it pushed them one point ahead of Canterbury on the final points table, meaning the Stags took third place.

A top-three finish ensures they will play the lower ranked teams twice next season.

Some of the statchat from Hay's last match deserved a special mention. His knock of 179 meant:

•  He became just the second player, after Mathew Sinclair, to score 7000 runs for the team
•  He became one of just four players (with Sinclair, Canterbury's Peter Fulton and Wellington's Luke Woodcock) to achieve 7,000 runs for a single NZ Domestic team
•  His 18th Central Stags century places his second overall for the Stags in all-time hundreds, behind only Sinclair

•  He is now the proud owner of the two longest first class individual innings in Stags history, with his 226 against the Otago Volts in Alexandra in 2018/19 taking 621 minutes and this week's 179 in Napier, 612 minutes (thank you to Francis Payne for this statistic)
•  He departed just one run short of breaking the NZ record for the highest score in one's last first-class match, a record that goes all the way back to 1918/19 when Ernest Beecher scored 180 (his only century) for Wellington versus Auckland (thank you to Francis Payne for this statistic)
• Hay's 179 was the third highest score of his career.

The New Zealand Cricket Almanack will record that the Wellington Firebirds won the Plunket Shield undefeated, and they took a key victory off the Stags in Nelson earlier in the season. The Stags then very nearly beat them in Palmerston North, but couldn't get the last wicket in time.

Had the Stags been successful in that game, today they would have been celebrating a back-to-back championship win - but that's cricket.

The team will be back next season, under a new captain, to begin again in the hunt for the hardest trophy to win.

Thank you to everyone who has supported the team this season. And thanks for everything, Haysie. Enjoy the next chapter.

 

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Article added: Wednesday 27 March 2024