Gillette Cup Wellington Regional Playoff this Sunday

The Hutt International Boys’ School and St Pat’s Silverstream First XIs meet this Sunday in the Wellington regional final of the Gillette Cup.

The winner will go on to represent Wellington in the national Gillette Cup tournament from 7-10 December in Palmerston North.

Silverstream, who represented Wellington at the Gillette Cup national finals last year, is fielding the nucleus of the team that beat Wellington College in last year’s Wellington region final and are eager for repeat success said their Director of Sport Warrick Bowden.

“We were fortunate to represent Wellington at the Gillette Cup in 2009 and believe that we can perform better given the opportunity to play in the nationals again,” said Bowden. “But it’s one step at a time and we can’t look too far ahead past this weekend’s game against HIBS.

Silverstream have previously appeared in three Gillette Cup finals, in 1996, 2006 and 2009. They won the tournament in 1996.

Victory for HIBS would see them represent Wellington in the finals for the first time and their coach Paul Brennan said his team is excited about that chance.

“We’ve got a young team, with several Year 11 boys in the mix who are matched against a number of Stream players involved in senior club cricket, but we’ll be giving it our all to defeat them,” said Brennan. “We’ll look to play good cricket and if we do that we’ll be in the game and we might get a result.”

Now in its 21st year, the prestigious Gillette Cup finals series in Palmerston North has been reduced from eight teams to six this year, with one school from each of the six major associations set to decide the 2010 title. There were 192 entries from throughout the country this year.

Last week’s semi-final results saw HIBS defeat St. Pat’s Town and St. Pat’s Silverstream overcome Wellington College.

Several current Wellington U18 squad members will play in the final, including Henry Walsh, Ben Rammell and Sam Dean for Silverstream and Brad Chin and Brett Johnson for HIBS. Johnson, a Wellington U15 representative last summer, scored a century in his team’s semi-final win over St. Pat’s Town.

Match details:

When: Sunday 7 November
Where: Trentham Memorial Park, from 10.30am
Format: 50 overs per innings

Winner to represent the Wellington region in the 6-team National Gillette Cup finals at Palmerston North in December.

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