Wairarapa Koru 1, the weather 4!

Typical spring weather got in the way to spoil many Wairarapa senior sports over the weekend. All three Giants’ games were cancelled and the much anticipated Coastal Challenge cricket against the two local teams Red Star Lansdowne (vs) Greytown had to be abandoned when the rain started falling after about 25mins of play. That was a bit of a shame because the forecast heavy rain never eventuated and the weather cleared to be quite a nice afternoon.

Everyone scrambles to get the covers on the pitch when rain interrupted play on Saturday

However Sunday was lovely and the very young Wairarapa Koru team hosted Hawkes Bay in the first round of the women’s Copelin Cup competition in Masterton. I’d be first to admit that I was surprised at just how good they were. While senior opening batter Georgia Atkinson would have to be the star performer with a extremely good century, all the others supported her and, with a help of a couple of poor fielding efforts by the Bay team, they all looked good and confident with the bat in hand and their running between the wickets.

Georgia Atkinson celebrates her century

Although I didn’t see a lot of their bowling and fielding it must have been very good to dismiss the opposition for a paltry 81 runs.

At the end of the day, Wairarapa completely outplayed Hawkes Bay and thoroughly deserved the win. After one round they lead the Copelin Cup ladder on 4 points equal with Manawatu, however they have a much better net run rate of 3.675 compared to Manawatu’s 1.134.

Jeff Kay happy umpiring in his first representative game on Sunday

New Koru coach Patrick Wootton should be pleased with the team's first outing

Final scores

Wairarapa Koru 228/6 after 40 overs, Hawkes Bay 81/10 after 25.5 overs.

Batting:

Georgia Atkinson 100 runs off 98 balls with a strike rate of 102

Vanessa Taylor 34 off 65. SR 52

Madison Brown 22 off 22. SR 100

Bowling:

Melissa Hansen 3 wickets

Grace Jaspers 3 wickets

Georgia Atkinson 2 wickets

Jade Williams 2 wickets