It was a beautiful Tuesday morning, the sun shone brightly (a rare occasion) and the sky was clear. Today for the first time in 12 years the Newlands Intermediate cricket team was set to play Raroa intermediate in the ANZ regional cup final.

We were nervous, we knew Raroa was a very strong cricketing team and that we’d have to put up quite a performance if we were to overthrow their title of being the best in wellington. Unsurprisingly, the mood among the team was quite tense and somewhat somber.

Raroa had not played their semi-final and the whole team was watching the progress of the match on CricHq. They were playing Evans bay, we expected Raroa to breeze past them easily, but the game said otherwise, only after the fourth over Raroa had already lost 1 wicket. Time seemed to be going faster than normal, end of over 5 more overs, 2 wickets in 2 overs! What was happening? There was buzz in the Newlands team, no one knew what was going on, Raroa seemed to be collapsing. The game progressed, and our team kept a close eye, just narrowly beating them. Raroa progressed to the final, receiving a scare from an unlikely Evans Bay team. Unsurprised we geared up and headed to Alex Moore, our venue for the fixture.

We arrived at the ground, standing tall and proud were two Raroa tents. Players were squeezed inside drinking water, eating food, and preparing for the game. We laid our bags down and proceeded to have a team talk.

Our friend Max Charles had recently passed away, and this game had been postponed so both teams could have a breather. Some players in our team, including me, were still shocked. In remembrance of him, we wore black tape around our arms as tribute to him. Our team will always remember Max, he was a friend, a comedian, and a great person in all, we’ll miss Max and always keep him in our hearts. Now we had to play for him.

We started off well, and had confidence in ourselves, we fielded with discipline and gave it everything we possibly could. We kept their run rate low and were in a good position. After the first innings finished they had scored a strong 176. Our batsman went in well, we started slowly though. They really kept the foot on the throat as we did with them, and unfortunately we weren’t quite able to win.

Congratulations to Thomas Cooper (Randal) for getting a 50 for us and for Max, just not being able to get enough runs we managed a score of 105.

Although we didn’t win, it was already an achievement for Newlands Intermediate to get to the final, something that the team and school is proud of. After the game Raroa invited us for food and we had a nice experience with them after the game.

By Desmond Rm4