At a glance

Chiefs 26

(Etene Nanai-seturo, Angus Ta’avao tries; Damian Mckenzie 4 pen, 2 con)

(James Lentjes, Aaron Smith, Josh Ioane tries; Josh Ioane pen, con, Mitch Hunt pen). HT: 10-5.

hosting the Blues on Friday night, lock Pari Pari Parkinson was to be assessed after exiting the game at halftime with some damage to the same ankle which he had reconstruction surgery on last year.

Meanwhile, at the other crest of the rollercoaster, the Chiefs are now right back in the mix for the decider, following a third win on the bounce.

Having started their season with back-to-back defeats in an 11-game losing run, they have come up trumps in three successive thrilling finishes, their latest again thanks to star playmaker Damian Mckenzie, who slotted the extra-time penalty goal.

‘‘Our big players are stepping up and leading the charge for our young guys to follow,’’ coach Clayton Mcmillan said of a performance where the likes of All Blacks Anton Lienert-brown and Luke Jacobson were also highly instrumental.

‘‘No-one gave us too much chance, and it didn’t look too good after two weeks, but we ground away. For us, from week three of the competition, it’s been backs against the wall and just having to work hard and improve our craft.

‘‘So those are encouraging signs from a young squad, but it’d be a lot easier on my heart if we had done a lot better when we were 23-13 up and could have closed the game out there.’’

Prop Angus Ta’avao, who scored one of the Chiefs’ two tries at Forsyth Barr Stadium, said it was ‘‘a different changing room’’ when the wins started happening.

‘‘I think once we got that first one, a little bit of belief creeps in, a few more smiles around the place and it just grows on you,’’ he said.

‘‘You look at those 11 games, and most of them were lost within five points. We’ve just worked really hard on winning those little moments.’’

Stand-in White Ferns captain Amy Satterthwaite didn’t duck out of the way of a testing one on Saturday night.

After being clean-swept by the Australians in the Rose Bowl ODI series inmount Maunganui, Satterthwaite was asked what improvements the New Zealand women’s cricket side needed to make following a forgettable season.

She acknowledged the list was lengthy.

‘‘I think there’s quite a few areas we can look at,’’ said Satterthwaite, who took over the captaincy reins after Sophie Devine withdrew from the side following the opening Twenty20 game of the series against Australia in Hamilton.

‘‘Consistency probably sums it up in a way.

‘‘Consistency with the ball – I think we started to get better with that over the summer, which is really pleasing.

‘‘I think with the bat it’s partnerships. We talked about it a lot and we’re not going to win games when we’re losing wickets in clumps regularly and not getting to those big 80-100 plus partnerships. That’s going to be the key for us moving forward.

‘‘Within that is our ability to keep rotating the strike – the more we can do that, it takes the pressure off and then you can end up getting those big partnerships.’’

The White Ferns looked in with a decent shout to end Australia’s world-record ODI winning streak at 23 at Bay Oval on Saturday night when they restricted the visitors to 149-7 off 25 overs in a rainshortened encounter.

But they never looked like chasing down their target, losing by 21 runs, leaving them with a sorry record of just three wins from 16 encounters this season.

The Bob Carter-coached side suffered in comparison to the success of the national men’s side, with the Black Caps winning all seven series they contested at home since late November, losing just two games to Australia in their Twenty20 series.

While the Black Caps were feasting on the West Indies, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the White Ferns had a challenging diet of series against Australia (twice) and England, the two leading international outfits in women’s cricket.

But in measuring themselves against the best in the world, New Zealand came up well short of expectations, both internal and external.

A number of their defeats were one-sided contests.

New Zealand fell well below elite standards with bat, ball and fielding against their slick rivals, never excelling in any facet for more than brief periods.

They suffered their first setback in Brisbane late last year when Suzie

Highlanders 23