After being rained off on Tuesday, the Gillette Venus Cup Regional Tournament was played over the last two days (Wednesday and Thursday, 18 and 19 October) in Hagley Park.

This tournament is the qualifying event for the Nationals School girls Gillette Venus Cup.  Our Christchurch Girls’ High School/ Te Kura o Hine Waiora 1st XI team was looking forward to the challenge of competing against 12 other Canterbury teams. The one Nelson team entered unfortunately pulled out late last week. Our team was in a pool with St Margaret’s College 2nd XI, Rolleston College and Burnside High School. In all three matches Christchurch Girls’ High School/ Te Kura o Hine Waiora batted first and set great targets, in a 15 over game, for the opposing teams to reach.  

Results were:

• versus St Margaret’s College 2nd XI - CGHS 110/1, SMC 35/5
• versus Rolleston College - CGHS 109/1, Rolleston 26/5
• versus Burnside High School – CGHS 103/2, Burnside 50/5

The team had made semi finals and played Villa Maria College. Again, very consistent batting with Christchurch Girls’ High School/ Te Kura o Hine Waiora making 104/4 and Villa 68/6, and this put Christchurch Girls’ High School/ Te Kura o Hine Waiora in the final against St Margaret’s College 1st XI.

With perfect weather conditions and lots of support from whanau, St Margaret’s won the toss and chose to bat first. They made 102/7 which was an achievable target for Christchurch Girls’ High School/ Te Kura o Hine Waiora, but one the team had not had to bat towards over the tournament; St Margaret’s were also very strong in the field.

What a final this ended up being, very tense and it went down to the last over! Sacha Arnold made 60 runs and set up Christchurch Girls’ High School/ Te Kura o Hine Waiora well, before being out LBW. Our team then had to get 4 runs off the last over with only 1 wicket in hand.

Lucy Dawson hit the winning runs, with great cheering from the sideline. Christchurch Girls’ High School/ Te Kura o Hine Waiora were regional winners and qualifiers for Nationals, a fantastic result. Thanks to our scorer Rachel Arnold and, especially to coach Paul Knight. The Gillette Venus Cup National tournament is to be held 11 – 13 December and will be heldat Lincoln. We wish our Christchurch Girls’ High School/ Te Kura o Hine Waiora 1 st XI team well for this event.