Two first-time winners have taken out top honours at the Central Districts Cricket Association 2025/26 Awards.

At 20, Emma McLeod has already represented New Zealand’s WHITE FERNS and now adds Central Hinds Player of the Year to her CV.

The young batter also won the Hallyburton Johnstone Shield Player of the Year trophy for the first time after a season that produced her maiden Hinds century (an unbeaten 139) and a 59.25 average as well as her maiden Super Smash half century.

Brad Schmulian is Central Stags Player of the Year after solid form and career-best run tallies in both the Plunket Shield and Ford Trophy arenas.

Schmulian was one of three players (with Curtis Heaphy and Will Young) to score two centuries in the Stags’ successful one-day campaign, scoring 466 runs at 51.77 to rank him in the top three nationally.

In the Plunket Shield he finished in the top two, with 717 runs at 55.15, two centuries and four half centuries, and his leg-spin bowling also contributed to a top-three finish for the Stags.

Other major awards saw left-arm paceman Ray Toole named Plunket Shield Player of the Year for the first time after 35 wickets at a 23.57 average — the top first-class wicket-taker in New Zealand this summer.

Central Hinds captain Hannah Rowe led from the front as Hinds’ Super Smash Player of the Year and, after a summer in which he earned a BLACKCAPS recall, fellow Manawatū scion Dane Cleaver is the Stags’ Super Smash Player of the Year.

Fellow BLACKCAP Josh Clarkson was named Ford Trophy Player of The Year.

Clarkson stepped up as the team’s frontline allrounder to help the Stags lift the national title, and was The Ford Trophy’s top wicket-taker with 23 wickets at an impressive 19.47 average.

He also scored a century; had one of the highest strike rates in the competition at 122.08, and hit 14 sixes — the most in the competition.

Wairarapa’s Elizabeth Cohr was named John Turkington Forestry Emerging Player of the Year after  a strong debut season for the Hinds. 

The off-spinner took a wicket first ball on the way to 4/35 in her first Hallyburton Johnstone Shield game, then took 4/13, 2/33 and 4/68 in her next three games. 

Cohr finished with 14 wickets at 16.35 to place her in the national one-day competition’s top nine wicket-takers.

Players’ Player awards reflects overall contribution to the team and values on and off the field, and is voted by the players themselves: Rowe and Schmulian received the respective Hinds’ and Stags’ Players’ Player of the Year accolades for 2025/26.

Hawke’s Bay’s Regan Combe won the cup for Central Districts Umpire of the Year for the first time, and Nelson’s Euan West is the recipient of the 2025/26 CD Scorer Recognition Award.

The awards night held at Hastings’ Toi Toi Arts and Events Centre capped a successful 75th jubilee season for Central Districts Cricket. 

It also marked the end of an era as the association saluted two retiring heroes of its game with standing ovations.

Scott Briasco debuted for the Central Stags as a young allrounder in the 1982/83 season and went on to a career in which he held almost every key role in the team and organisation — from Stags captain, coach, selector and manager, to CDCA general manager and in recent years, Head of Operations and competitions manager.

Briasco said it had been his pleasure to be immersed in a sport and organisation underpinned by the strength of it values.

“We are all involved in the business of sport, but sport really is about the people, and the values and character of the people in CD Cricket has made the organisation what it is today.

“I feel very fortunate to have been able to work in CD Cricket and to hold those various roles which has allowed me to get to know and to work alongside so many good people in that time.”

Gary Hermansson ONZM made his name as New Zealand’s foremost mental skills coach, but his lifetime connection with CD Cricket began with representing CD Colts and CD Under 23 as a wicketkeeper-batsman in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

A Professor Emeritus of Massey University, Hermansson has worked with both the Hinds and Stags teams over the course of a distinguished career that also saw him appointed as mental skills coach/team psychologist for the BLACKCAPS and four New Zealand Olympic and four New Zealand Commonwealth Games teams.

Briasco and Hermansson are both Life Members of Central Districts Cricket Association, and Chief Executive Lance Hamilton said their expertise and trusty parkside presence would be missed.

“Scott and Gary are a huge part of our CD family. There just aren’t enough words to thank them enough or even to describe the amount of service and the legacy that they have both given to this organisation and its teams and people, over the decades.”

Hamilton said Hermansson’s legacy would continue to be recognised in the form of a new annual award, to be presented for the first time next season: The Gary Hermansson Performance Mindset Award will go to either a Stags or Hinds player, selected on criteria that reflected Hermansson’s own values.

Hermansson said it had been a great privilege to have been involved with Central Districts Cricket for so long — working under five CEOs in that time, and witnessing many achievements and evolutions along the way.

 “Most especially it has been a privilege for me to have been able to engage with the people of CD over that time.

“I’ve appreciated the way in which players have been prepared to engage with me as they’ve grappled with the personal and professional challenges and pressures of high performance sport. 

“The spaces that I’ve worked within have at times been very personal, and I thank those players for that trust in me, and for engaging with me in genuinely meaningful ways over the past 21 years.”

2025/26 Central Districts Cricket Awards

Central Hinds Awards

• Player of the Year:
  Emma McLeod
• Players’ Player of the Year:
  Hannah Rowe
• Hallyburton Johnstone Shield Player of the Year:
  Emma McLeod
• Super Smash Player of the Year:
  Hannah Rowe
• John Turkington Forestry Emerging Player:
  Elizabeth Cohr

Central Stags Awards

• Player of the Year:
  Brad Schmulian
• Players’ Player of the Year:
  Brad Schmulian
• Plunket Shield Player of the Year:
  Ray Toole
• Super Smash Player of the Year:
  Dane Cleaver
• Ford Trophy Player of the Year:
  Josh Clarkson

QBE CD Community Cricket Awards

• QBE Volunteer of the Year:
  Robin Dodd (Taradale Cricket Club)
• QBE Community Umpire of the Year:
  George Tukapua (Horowhenua-Kāpiti Cricket Association)
• QBE CD Club of the Year:
  Mangorei Cricket Club (Taranaki Cricket Association)

CD Inter-Districts Cricket Awards

• Copelin Cup Player of the Year:
  Aniela Apperley (Hawke’s Bay Cricket Association)
• Mike Shrimpton Trophy Player of the Tournament:
  Cate Pedersen (Hawke’s Bay Cricket Association)
• Chapple Cup Player of the Tournament
  Mason Hughes (Manawatū Cricket Association)
• Hawke Cup Player of the Year:
  Josh Borrell (Taranaki Cricket Association)
• CD Umpire of the Year:
  Regan Combe (Hawke’s Bay Cricket Association)
• CD Scorer Recognition Award:
  Euan West (Nelson Cricket Association)

Tides Hotel CD Age-Group Representative Awards

• CD U17 Women’s Player of the Tournament:
  Aria Kearney (Manawatū Cricket Association)
• CD U17 Men’s Player of the Tournament:
  Fergus Benefield (Hawke’s Bay Cricket Association)
• CD U19 Women’s Player of the Tournament:
  Ava Williams (Hawke’s Bay Cricket Association)
• CD U19 Men’s Player of the Tournament:
  Connor Rees (Cricket Whanganui)

All images ©️ 2026

Paul Taylor | Alphapix

Article added: Friday 3 April 2026