Central Districts strong squads for Super Smash
- editor59343
- 48 minutes ago
- 6 min read
The teams have their first games this Saturday, 27 December at home in Palmerston North where the Hinds will play last season’s female champion Wellington .
Then the men’s reigning champs the Stags look to kick-start their 2025/26 campaign against the Wellington Firebirds.
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The Stags have pace bowler Brett Randell back in the nick of time, after a nine-and-a-month recovery from a broken collarbone and subsequent shoulder surgery.
With last season’s standout paceman Blair Tickner now nursing his own injured shoulder, the strike bowler’s return is right on cue. He’s joined by up-and-coming Toby Findlay who likewise returns from the injury tent in time for the Super Smash — having been out of action since the early Ford Trophy games this season.
The Hinds have two stellar signings for their parallel campaign, bringing Surrey’s winning Vitality Blast captain and former England international Bryony Smith and young England A captain Grace Scrivens to New Zealand.
Scrivens, 22, is already familiar with a number of the stars and venues she’ll encounter across the campaign, having led England A on tour here against New Zealand A two years ago.
The powerful pair will turbo-charge the Hinds’ top order in a summer in which a bonus point has been introduced for women’s games when a team scored 150 runs, or achieves a run rate of >1.25x than that of the opposition in the chase.
While Smith captains Surrey, Scrivens captains Essex — and both bring extensive T20 league experience from around the world. Scrivens has played for the Melbourne Renegades in the WBBL, and the Trent Rockets and London Spirit in The Hundred, and off-spinning allrounder Smith for the Rockets, Hobart Hurricanes and Welsh Fire.
Between them, they pack 283 matches of T20 experience.
Both signings are available for the entire campaign, while the Black Caps mid-January white-ball tour or India means the Stags will have a less settled line-up.
Left-arm spinner Jayden Lennox had only recently been confirmed as the Stags’ new T20 captain (in the absence of Tom Bruce) when he got the call telling him he’d been picked for the Black Caps for the first time, for the T20 leg of the India tour only — alongside the Stags’ New Zealand rep Will Young, and a recall for this season’s standout allrounder in all formats, Josh Clarkson.
The trio will still be available up until round four of the Super Smash, while Bruce — the team’s all-time leading T20 run-scorer with 2,594 runs in the Central colours, will be back from his overseas stint with the Desert Vipers soon after.
Lennox is coming off phenomenal figures of 7/10 for Hawke’s Bay against Horowhenua-Kāpiti in last weekend’s T20 Chapple Cup, at Palmerston North’s Manawaroa Park — where he got the call telling him he was off to India after his consistency for the Stags over the last few seasons, and New Zealand A performances this year.
“Touring India is the pinnacle for someone in my role,” said Lennox.
“To get to go over there and see how the powerhouse nation does it, it’s seriously exciting."
Manawatū won the Chapple Cup title in a last-ball thriller final against Taranaki, most the Stags squad turning out for their Districts over the three days and Randell coming through the weekend successfully for Cave Cup winner Nelson.
Dean Foxcroft — who as a rookie was instrumental in the Stags winning the 2019 Super Smash Grand Final at Seddon Park, represented Cave Cup finalist Marlborough as a loan player, and on Saturday stands to play his first Super Smash game for Central since that 2019 Grand Final, having repped the Volts in the intervening seasons.
Most of the Hinds’ T20 squad has also had a solid short-format warm-up in the North v South series in Nelson or in the T20 Mike Shrimpton Trophy, also won by Manawatū, in Levin last weekend.
Young, Clarkson and Lennox are expected to be back for the last two rounds of the competition ahead of Finals and after this Saturday’s popular annual post-Christmas game at Palmerston North, the Stags and Hinds head to the South Island for away matches in Alexandra and Christchurch, and on their home turf of Saxton Oval, Nelson (3 January).
The latter two events are both 2025 Grand Final rematches between the Canterbury Kings and Stags, Central having beaten a star-studded Kings team by six wickets at the Cello Basin Reserve last season.
Central then hits the road again, this time around the North Island, before hitting Napier’s McLean Park for three home doubleheaders on 13, 16 and 24 January.
The Central teams also have a big date to circle on Friday, 23 January when Central Districts Cricket will officially celebrate its 75th jubilee.
Public can join a host of current and past players at the 75th Jubilee Long Lunch, featuring speakers and former BLACKCAPS and WHITE FERNS Mark Greatbatch, Aimee Watkins, Tony Blain, 2000 ICC World Cup winner Emily Travers, and special guest Ross Taylor, by purchasing tickets online at www.cdcricket.co.nz.
Alumni will also feature on the management side of things for both the Stags and Hinds during this Super Smash season.
Retired Stags Plunket Shield captain Greg Hay returns for his second summer as the Hinds’ assistant coach, supporting head coach Deepak Joon.
And another successful retired skipper, Kieran Noema-Barnett, has been appointed as head coach Ben Smith’s assistant for the Stags.
Noema-Barnett still holds the Super Smash record for the fastest fifty — off just 14 balls in the 2010/11 HRV Cup, peppering Invercargill with six sixes and three boundaries; and only four men, current players Dane Cleaver, Bruce, Young and Clarkson, have played more than his 89 T20s for the Stags.
Richly experienced WHITE FERN Hannah Rowe is heading into her first season as the Hinds’ full-time T20 captain, having both co-captained (with Jess Watkin, now Northern Brave’s captain) and deputised for the team in the past.
Rowe requires just three more Super Smash caps to become the first player to reach 100 T20 games for the team, putting her on track to bring up the milestone at Hagley Oval on New Year’s Day.
Rowe is already the team’s leading all-time wicket-taker with 71 victims, with fellow contracted WHITE FERN Rosemary Mair in second spot on 62.
The key pair return from side strains that excluded them from the most recent weekend of the one-day Hallyburton Johnstone Shield action and the subsequent NZC North v South series last week.
Napier’s Cate Pedersen is in the frame to play her first T20 for the Hinds since 2021/22 after her return from Auckland, while new sensation, leg-spinner Lizzy Cohr springboards off her outstanding first four matches of Hallyburton Johnstone Shield one-day cricket into the Hinds’ Super Smash squad for the first time.
The 23-year-old from Wairarapa debuted for the Hinds in the one-day format — dashing overnight to New Plymouth as a late replacement, following Ocean Bartlett’s concussion — last month.
Cohr has gone on to take three four-wicket hauls from her first four one-day appearances, and is the Hallyburton Johnstone Shield’s hitherto unheralded top wicket-taker overall with 14 wickets at a tight average of just 10.64.
The public gate by the hockey turf opens at 11.40am on Saturday at Fitzherbert Park, and spectators are advised to arrive in plenty of time to avoid queues, with a large crowd anticipated. The Hinds versus Blaze game starts at 12.40pm, with the Stags and Firebirds following from 4.25pm.
The opening games of Super Smash feature Nortern Districts against Auckland on Boxing Day at Seddon Park.
Super Smash Round 1 of 10
Fitzherbert Park, Palmerston North
27 December 2025
12.40pm | Central Hinds v Wellington Blaze
4.25pm | Central Stags v Wellington Firebirds
Central Hinds squad:
Hannah Rowe — captain, Manawatū
Elizabeth (Lizzy) Cohr — uncapped, Wairarapa
Flora Devonshire — Hawke’s Bay
Kate Gaging — wicketkeeper, Nelson
Claudia Green — Nelson
Ashtuti Kumar — Manawatū
Emma McLeod — Wairarapa
Rosemary Mair — Hawke’s Bay
Cate Pedersen — Hawke’s Bay
Grace Scrivens — uncapped, overseas player
Bryony Smith — uncapped, overseas player
Kerry Tomlinson — Taranaki
Head Coach: Deepak Joon
Assistant Coach: Greg Hay
Contracted players unavailable for selection:
Georgia Atkinson (unavailable), Ocean Bartlett (concussion)
Central Stags:
Jayden Lennox — captain, Hawke’s Bay (T20 captaincy debut)
Will Clark — Hawke’s Bay
Josh Clarkson — Nelson
Dane Cleaver — wicketkeeper, Manawatū
Toby Findlay — Hawke’s Bay
Dean Foxcroft — Hawke’s Bay
Curtis Heaphy — Manawatū
Ajaz Patel — Hawke’s Bay
Brett Randell — Nelson
Angus Schaw — Hawke’s Bay
Ray Toole — Manawatū
Will Young — Taranaki