North Otago and South Canterbury, which started their journey towards a Hawke Cup challenge with outright wins in the first round of the zone four elimination round against Otago Country and Mid Canterbury respectively, will meet at Whitestone Contracting Stadium this weekend.
Both sides showed batting depth with North Otago’s Nathan Smith and South Canterbury’s Dinesh de Silva producing timely centuries while the spin attack of South Canterbury’s Sam Carlaw and Glen Drake should test the home side’s batting line-up.
The North Otago batting showed more than a degree of fragility against the Otago Country attack last week.
North Otago’s quality will lift with the naming of allrounder Ben Cant in the squad for the first time this season and his batting and bowling will give some solidity to both facets of his side’s effort.South Canterbury will hope that it does not have to rely on No9 batsman de Silva to resurrect a shaky batting line-up. De Silva has 49 first-class games in Sri Lanka under his belt but will expect the top order to set its heights a little higher.
Former Volts paceman and former national under-19 representative Craig Smith showed he has lost little of his skill with the ball and, backed up by South African Francois Mostert, could well cause real problems for the opposition batsmen.
- Terry O'Neill
North Otago v South Canterbury
Oamaru, starting today
North Otago: Craig Smith (captain), Duncan Drew, Jordan Cafferkey, Jeremy Smith, Francois Mostert, Lachlan Kingan, James Ferris, Regan George, Jordan Horrell, Blake James, Nathan Smith, Ben Cant, Brady Kingan.
South Canterbury: Sam Carlaw (captain), Joe Williams, Jacob Naylor, Liam Beck, Glen Drake (vc), Matt Brown, Phil Lill, Dinesh de Silva, Ben Watson, Stan Mair, Craig Hinton, George McDougall
