Smith’s performance for North Otago up there with best
NORTH Otago allrounder Jeremy Smith joined some illustrious company over the weekend.
The North Otago side qualified for a Hawke Cup challenge in a couple of weeks, thanks mainly to a blinder of a performance from Smith.
The term allrounder gets thrown around a lot these days. Anyone who hits a few runs down the bottom of the order when he or she is mainly in the team as a bowler is termed as an allrounder.
But Smith had a true allrounder’s game for North Otago in its match against Southland at the weekend, in Invercargill.
It was an allornothing encounter, with both sides needing to get some points from the game to finish top of zone four and get a Hawke Cup challenge.
North Otago ended up winning outright by 15 runs as Southland came up short, trying to score 167 off 16 overs.
Smith, who is the older brother of the Otago Volts allrounder Nathan Smith, had a game to remember.
When North Otago batted first he scored an unbeaten 57. He then helped engineer a Southland collapse for 183, which was 30 runs short of North Otago’s total.
Smith took five wickets for 81 off his 21 overs.
In his second turn at bat, Smith, who plays senior cricket in Dunedin for Carisbrook Dunedin Kaikorai, managed another not out, getting through to 25 as North Otago set a stiff target.
Smith, though, saw to it Southland would come up short. His nine overs in the second innings may have gone for 66 runs but he picked up six wickets as the side won the match.
Smith had an overall match bowling figures of 11 wickets for 157 runs, an impressive achievement along with his half century in the first innings and a valuable undefeated 25 in the second turn at bat.
He joined John Reid as the only player to have scored a halfcentury and also taken 10 wickets in a match for North Otago.
Reid, the former NZ captain and allrounder, did that against Ashburton Country in February 1958.
Reid scored 51 and then took eight for 24 in the first innings and five for 27 in the second innings.
The bighitting NZ captain spent three seasons in North Otago.
North Otago will now go on to take on Nelson, which took the Hawke Cup off Canterbury Country over the weekend, winning on the first innings.
The match between the two sides will take place over three days, starting on February 13.