Australia's Simon Hockey on the first day of Round 2 vs New Zealand
Australia's Simon Hockey on the first day of Round 2 vs New ZealandDay one of test two said goodbye to Toby Garrison (who was only available for the first test) and hello to Harps Tahurangi. Harps is an excellent player from Wellington in NZ and today marks his MacRob debut.
The day started with a full group photo for all 24 players. Once the formalities were finished with, the serious business of test match croquet resumed.
Today saw the following match-ups:
- Aiken Hakes & Paddy Chapman vs Stephen Forster & Ian Dumergue
- Joe Hogan & Chris Shilling vs Robert Fletcher & Malcolm Fletcher
- Jenny Clarke & Harps Tahurangi vs Greg Fletcher & Simon Hockey
Unfortunately due to refereeing constraints, the decision was again made to split the teams up, with 2 pairs from NZ vs Australia and 2 pairs from England vs USA competing on lawns 1-4, and 1 pair from each country competing on lawns 5 and 6 (instead of using three of the four lawns numbered 1-4 and lawns 5-7 in order for test matches to be kept together).
In the NZ vs Australia test, it was a very closely contested battle. All the NZ pairs found themselves trailing 0-1 after the first 90 minutes of play. After that there was something of a kiwi revival, with NZ scoring the test match first point through Chapman & Hakes - in a closely-fought match that contained too many errors for the conditions, the kiwis came out 2-1 winners thanks to a tidy Hakes TP in the decider.
On the other side of the club, Harps (on debut) and Jenny played some excellent croquet to take the match to a third game, before succumbing to a 5th turn TP in the decider.
In Chris and Joe's match, again there was a good fight-back courtesy of a straight triple from Chris (yet another excellent turn under pressure from the debutante). In the decider, the kiwis had a chance for a 3rd turn ball round, but missed a 5-yarder after H2 with a pioneer waiting at H3. From there, the Australians closed out the match in two turns.
So overall after day 1 of the second test, NZ trail the MacRob favourites Australia by 2-1. We're looking forward to at least squaring things up tomorrow.