Stags player achieves milestone
Hay second to play 100 first-class matches for side
Central Stags captain Greg Hay has become just the second player to play 100 first-class matches for his side. Hay achieved the milestone against Canterbury at Napier’s McLean Park this week, following in the footsteps of the only other Central Stags representative to have achieved the milestone, his recordholding predecessor Mathew Sinclair.
The stats were stacking up for Hay, the rock of the first-class side who played his overall career 100th firstclass match three weeks ago (having also twice represented New Zealand A during his lengthy career) at his home ground in Nelson.
In Auckland in the opening round this season, he broke Jamie How’s record for the most first-class wins as Stags captain.
After another exciting outright victory last week in Dunedin, Hay now has 15 Plunket Shield wins — and has twice lifted the revered Plunket Shield as the team’s skipper.
Hay has opened the season in brilliant form, carrying his bat through the first day of the season, for a century that set up his team’s innings victory in Auckland.
The gritty opener played another significant hand with the bat in the latest match, too.
He played his very first game in November 2006, against the Wellington Firebirds at the Cello Basin Reserve.
That was almost another century as he was left stranded on 98 not out on debut.
Since then, Hay has accrued 6723 runs for the Stags at an average of 42.01, including 17 centuries and 32 half-centuries, with some memorable double centuries among them — including his all-time high of 226 in an emphatic victory in his only appearance at Molyneux Park, and his unbeaten 202 against Canterbury at
Rangiora.
In a career of two halves, the now 39-year-old debuted for the team as a flame-haired young gun 22-year-old from Nelson who had been a Young Player to Lord’s (representing the MCC Young Cricketers side, which offered playing opportunities to rising talents from around the world) in 2003.
Initially he struggled to find a consistent place in the Stags team, and drifted away entirely between 2009 and 2013 when you might have spotted him playing club cricket in Auckland or on a surfboard, trying to catch a break.
His return to the Stags’ first-class squad in December 2013 has led to the most emphatic period of his career. That comeback match saw him produce an unbeaten 83 first up, and he hasn’t looked back.
Moving up from the middle order to open the batting in latter seasons, and taking over the first-class captaincy from Will Young after the team’s 2019 championship win, he has found the niche from which he can be most influential. In 2020, he lifted the trophy himself, in his first summer as captain, and repeated the scenes earlier this year when the Stags clinched the trophy again with a thrilling result in Nelson.
Hay is the Stags’ second overall alltime run scorer, with his 6723 shaded only by Sinclair’s phenomenal 9148.
He is also second-equal on the list of most centuries for the side (17, shared with Peter Ingram). Who’s ahead of him? Yep. Just “Skippy” Sinclair, with 27.
And while Hay is the second highest capped Stag and just the second to join the 100 club, Sinclair has him there too with 119 caps.
The four-day match with Canterbury started on Wednesday.