Central Stags 147/8 in 20 overs (Dean Foxcroft 63, Kyle Abbott 2-29; Ish Sodhi 2-30) beat the Knights 80 all out in 14.4 overs (Ajaz Patel 3-24, Adam Milne 3-12, Doug Bracewell  2-10) by 67 runs at Seddon Park, Hamilton

Bridesmaids no more, the Central Stags are New Zealand’s 2019 Burger King Super Smash champions!

Grand Finalists for three years straight, it was third time lucky for the team as they dramatically reversed the stinging loss that had been inflicted on them a year earlier by rolling the star-studded Knights for just 80 runs to win the national title by 67 runs.

Scorecard 

The Grand Final was almost a mirror image of last year’s result and for Stags coach Heinrich Malan it was the perfect finish to his T20 tenure with the team.

Malan, who will hand over the reins to an as yet unnamed successor at the end of the Plunket Shield season, says he remained calm throughout most of the final but with eight wickets down, the emotions started to well up.

“Excitement, relief — it was everything at once then. I had started thinking about it in the Elimination Final (on Friday) to be fair, thinking about how it could be the last game for us, and the unknown fo getting across the line or not.

“Then heading to the Grand Final — these Knights boys put us under the pump a couple of weeks ago in Napier, but since then we’ve played some good cricket. White-ball cricket is all about momentum and peaking at the right time of the competition, and it obviously went our way. We were battle-hardened over the last couple of weeks.”

An elated Ajaz Patel, who claimed 3-24 on a Seddon Park pitch that once again invited the spinners to show their wares, put it simply: “It’s unreal. We finally got there!”

Doug Bracewell (2-10) had a hand in five of the wickets that fell as the pressure went up on the Knights, who were chasing the Stags’ 147/8. 

The Stags had thought 160 was a defendable total on the surface, but finals pressure also came into the equation — this time, on their opponents.

“The boys are stoked with the result, said Bracewell. “I thought we perhaps didn’t have enough runs on the board, but like Tom [Bruce] said, you have to make it enough, and once we started taking wickets, it fell into a rhythm and it happened — a fantastic result. We couldn’t be happier. I took three catches and none of them went in clean, so I’m very happy.”

Only one of the side had played in a winning T20 Grand Final before with Kieran Noema-Barnett’s experience a key factor in keeping his teammates calm and focused on gathering runs intelligently rather than trying to produce a big score against quality bowling.

Yet in the end it was a rookie who stood up and shone, 20-year-old Dean Foxcroft producing his fourth hald century of the competition, scoring 63 of the Stags’ runs.

“Foxy [Dean Foxcroft] playing the way he did, Jazzy [Ajaz Patel] getting a wicket every time he came in and Milney [Adam Milne, 3-12] finishing ot off the back end — exciting pieces of cricket there that culminated in a great day today,” said Malan.

The Stags’ attention will now turn to the first-class Plunket Shield, heading back into Thursday’s resumption against Canterbury in Rangiora, as the leaders and defending champions in the first-class format. 

Article added: Monday 18 February 2019