Star paceman Blair Tickner has overcome a challenging 12 months to become the Central Stags’ Player of the Year for a second straight season.

For a second time in her career, WHITE FERN Hannah Rowe meanwhile took home the premier Central Hinds trophy at the 2024/25 CD Cricket Awards in Napier.

This time last year, Tickner was heading off to Derbyshire for his first off-season English County contract, with his wife Sarah and young daughter.

Soon after, Sarah’s leukaemia diagnosis sparked an arduous year for the couple who cut short their stay in England to return home for Sarah’s chemotherapy.

The Tickners had already been dealing with life’s adversities, after Cyclone Gabrielle had ravaged Blair’s father’s home, while the Stags’ elite wicket-taker had also lost his hard-won BLACKCAPS contract.

Tickner continued to shine on the playing field, balancing his cricket for the Stags - a season in which he took both his 200th Plunket Shield wicket and 100th Super Smash wicket for his team - with supporting his wife through the summer.

He helped his team win the coveted Dream11 Super Smash trophy — beating a full-strength Canterbury side stacked with BLACKCAPS in the Final, and finishing as the top wicket-taker nationally in the men’s competition: 16 wickets at an outstanding T20 strike rate of just 12.38.

Even though he missed several games (either to support his wife or during to injury), he also finished in the top 10 Ford Trophy wicket-takers and, after returning from a torn bicep that saw him miss three of the last four rounds at the business end of the Plunket Shield, he made a brilliant return in the last first-class match of the season.

Despite having played only four of the eight first-class rounds, he was the standout pace bowler in the arena.

Tickner set up the nine-wicket demolition of the Auckland Aces with his career-best match figures of 8/48 in the last game of the summer - on a pitch that favoured spin over seam, setting up a doddle of a chase for his teammates.

He finished in the top 11 bowlers nationally with 21 wickets at a peerless 16.10 average — the best in the country amongst strike bowlers as he heads back to Derbyshire to pick up where he left off after last season’s interrupted stint of County cricket.

In a summer in which she made important contributions with the bat as well as her usual effective pace bowling, and carried extra responsibilty in the attack after an elbow injury to Rosemary Mair, senior allrounder Rowe won the Hinds Player of the Year trophy for the first time since 2018.

Rowe scored 250 runs in the Hinds’ one-dayers and took 18 wickets at 16.61, and in the T20 format took the most catches and produced the second-equal most runs for the team (126), as well as finishing as the Hinds’ equal top wicket-taker (with Claudia Green) after 10 wickets at a 20.60 average.

Rowe received the Hinds’ Dream11 Super Smash Player of the Year trophy, and was a co-winner, with Flora Devonshire, of the Hinds’ Players’ Player of the Year award — an accolade selected by teammates, taking in all aspects of team values, contribution and performance.

Devonshire, a crafty left-arm off-spin allrounder who made the WHITE FERNS at just 22 last month, was one of the chief architect’s of the team’s record winning one-day chase, against Northern Districts in February in New Plymouth.

With nerves of steel, she belted an unbeaten 73* off 71 balls to chase down an unlikely 293 for victory. The team won with a score of 296/5 for the biggest successful chase by any team in Hallyburton Johnstone Shield history.

Rising stars continue to shine for the team, the Hawke’s Bay youngster becoming a first-time winner of the Hallyburton Johnstone Shield Player of the Year award.

Wairarapa’s 19-year-old Emma McLeod — another WHITE FERNS debutante this season, picked up the John Turkington Forestry Emerging Player of the Year award for a second consecutive summer, after her outstanding achievements at all levels of the game.

Other major awards on the night saw 21-year-old Stags young gun Curtis Heaphy named as The Ford Trophy Player of the Year for the first time — he was the only player nationwide to score more than 500 runs in the men’s one-day competition this summer, averaging 71.71 with a best of 142.

First-class and T20 captain Tom Bruce took out the awards for Dream11 Super Smash Player of the Year and Stags’ Players’ Player of the Year.

The devastating striker led from the front, his 339 T20 runs at a superb 56.50 average placing him in the top two runscorers nationally - with fans clamouring for his recall to the national team.

Then Bruce bowled up to Auckland in the Plunket Shield to smash a new, all-time record for the highest ever Central Stags individual score, 345 — setting new first-class partnership records with Dane Cleaver and Josh Clarkson in the process, and only two tough half-chances offered across the entire 564-minute exhibition.

His majestic triple century was also the highest Plunket Shield score since the great Bert Sutcliffe in the early 1950s, the closest yet to toppling Sutcliffe’s seemingly untouchable New Zealand record.

Finishing in the top three Plunket Shield run-scorers nationally, Dane Cleaver’s class and consistency in the top order was rewarded by the Plunket Shield Player of the Year trophy.

Now the team’s most capped wicketkeeper-batter, he was also in the top bracket of glovemen with 33 catches (some in the field, after Heaphy also kept wicket) and two stumpings, and contributed 726 runs at an impressive 92.00 average.

Two centuries inlcuded an unbeaten 151* in Napier — with an unbeaten 98* among a further five half centuries.

Other awards saw Whanganui’s Scott Oliver, who made his Dream11 Super Smash umpiring debut in Napier this season, recognised by the CD Umpires and Scorers Association as CD Umpire of the Year.

Horowhenua-Kāpiti’s Zack Benton (Tāne) and Hawke’s Bay’s Kerry Tomlinson (Wāhine) picked up the respective CD Māori Player of the Tournament trophies after a summer in which CD Māori Wāhine once again lifted the national Rona McKenzie Taonga.

CD’s District Associations were also well represented, after a memorable season in which Taranaki won the Furlong Cup and then locked away the Hawke Cup, following a successful challenge against Hawke’s Bay and three defences.

Taranaki wicketkeeper-batter Rupert Young, the younger brother of BLACKCAP Will Young, was named Hawke Cup Player of the Year.

Wairarapa’s twin successes in the men’s Chapple Cup white-ball tournament and women’s Mike Shrimpton Trophy were reflected by Jake Jonas and Georgia Atkinson picking up the respective gongs.

Wairarapa youngsters Samuel Payne and Vanessa Taylor (above) also collected the two CD U19 player of the year awards, while Alex Pringle (Manawatū) and Jess Monk (Wairarapa) won the CD U17 player of the year trophies.

2024/25 CD Cricket Awards

CENTRAL HINDS AWARDS

Central Hinds Player of the Year, Super Smash Player of the Year

Hannah Rowe (Manawatū)

Hallyburton Johnstone Shield Player of the Year

Flora Devonshire (Hawke’s Bay)

Joint winners, Central Hinds Players’ Player of the Year

Hannah Rowe (Manawatū), Flora Devonshire (Hawke’s Bay)

John Turkington Forestry Emerging Player Award

Emma McLeod (Wairarapa)

CENTRAL STAGS AWARDS

Central Stags Player of the Year

Blair Tickner (Hawke's Bay)

Super Smash Player of the Year

Tom Bruce (Taranaki)

Plunket Shield Player of the Year

Dane Cleaver (Manawatū)

The Ford Trophy Player of the Year

Curtis Heaphy (Manawatū)

Central Stags Players' Player of the Year

Tom Bruce (Taranaki) 

CENTRAL DISTRICTS AWARDS 

Men’s Under-17 Player of the Year

Alex Pringle (Manawatū)

Men’s Under-19 Player of the Year

Sam Payne (Wairarapa)

Women’s Under-17 Player of the Year

Jess Monk (Wairarapa)

Women’s Under-19 Player of the Year

Vanessa Taylor (Wairarapa)

Mike Shrimpton Trophy Player of the Year

Georgia Atkinson (Wairarapa)

Hawke Cup Player of the Year (includes Furlong Cup)

Rupert Young (Taranaki)

Chapple Cup Player of the Tournament

Jake Jonas (Wairarapa)

CD Wāhine Māori Player of the Year

Kerry Tomlinson (Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Ngāti Porou; Hawke’s Bay)

CD Tāne Māori Player of the Year

Zack Benton (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tahu; Horowhenua-Kāpiti)

CDUSA Umpire of the Year

Scott Oliver (Whanganui)

CD Scorer Recognition Award

Bev Baker (Hawke’s Bay) 

And that's stumps.

Article added: Tuesday 8 April 2025