Cricket: Players smash records
Two Bay of Plenty players who smashed the all-time representative highest score set in 1998, and a Bay Development player who blasted a century on debut, will receive the BOPCA January and February Player of the Month Awards.
Some of the finest moments in Bay of Plenty Cricket, since their first representative game in 1932, have come in Hawke Cup matches. In 1997, Simon Winter went past Bay of Plenty's Mike Wright's highest total of 179 set in 1984, when Winter smashed 181 runs in a Hawke Cup defence against Central Otago. During the last weekend in January 2013, two Bay players overtook Winter's record, when the Bay of Plenty team lifted the Hawke Cup from Hamilton's grasp.
Opening the Bay's innings, Joe Carter set a fresh Bay of Plenty all-time highest score of 187 runs. However the record stood just a couple of hours, when Brent Hampton surpassed Carter's heroics to smash 194 runs and set new figures which are likely to stand well into the future.
The game will be long remembered with Bay of Plenty also setting a new Hawke Cup record of 701 runs. Hampton and Carter will receive the January BOPCA Player of the Month Award at the BOPCA Prizegiving in April 2013.
Promising Tauranga Boys' College batsmen Ben Musgrave had a dream debut for Bay of Plenty Development team in the ND Development competition and will receive the February BOPCA Player of the Month Award.
Musgrave took charge of his side's innings against Hamilton on February 10 to score an unbeaten 115.
