New Zealander Parlane targets league runs record

Neal Parlane is backing himself to score the 318 runs he requires to beat Robin Smith's long standing record for the highest aggregate number of runs in a Southern League season.

It was back in 1982 that Smith, then qualifying for Hampshire, clocked up 1,015 runs in 14 innings for Trojans at an average of 101.50.

Apart from fellow South African Greg Walsh, who notched 1,005 runs for the Stoneham club eight years later, no one has got near Smith's top-level achievement ... until now !

If his thumping 166 not out against Andover last month is to be any guide, it won't take Parlane long to beat the record.

But the chunky six-hitting Kiwi, who took his run aggregate to 698 last weekend, reckons it won't happen until the last match of the season.

"You've got to take account of the possibility of there being a game or two rained off and contemplate a failure or two, but I'm backing myself to beat Robin's record," he smiled.

Parlane set himself a 1,000 run target when he jetted in from Wellington, North Island in late April - as a replacement for Kenya World Cup ace Kennedy Otieno !

"I'd almost given up hope of coming across around Easter time," admitted Parlane, 24, who scored a welter of runs, initially for Formby then Hesketh & Fleetwood in the ECB Liverpool Competition in the last three seasons.

"But then I got news that Kennedy wasn't coming back, tied up arrangements with BAT and booked my flight over," he explained.

The former New Zealand Under-19 International, who played alongside Craig McMillan, Daniel Vetori and Matthew Bell for the junior Black Caps, has so far scored 698 runs in ten knocks.

He's so far hit two centuries and four scores of 50 or more, with South Wilts (150) and Andover on the receiving end of the two big centuries.

Parlane, who flies back to New Zealand in early September, didn't rate his knock against Andover.

"I reckon the 150 at South Wilts was my best innings; it certainly wasn't last week's."

Parlane hit eight sixes and 25 boundaries in that knock - only 22 of his 166 were either one's or two's - and, at the end of July, had scored 21 x 6s and 100 fours :a staggering 75pc of his runs in boundaries !

"It's easier to score runs down here in the Premier League because the pitches are better than in Liverpool," he says.

"Most of the time during the past two seasons up there, we played in the rain and only when it really bucketed down we didn't get on.

"There were a lot of dibbly-dobbly seam bowlers who nipped the ball off the seam in the damp. It seemed every team had two or three of them."

Even so, Parlane scored 1,405 runs for Fleetwood in 2002 - just 19 runs short of the club record.

"I was 70 not out in my 26th and last knock up there when it rained.

"I'm determined that won't happen again," he said.

But it's not all good news on the Parlane front - unless you happen to be one of his BAT Sports team-mates.

"I've already more or less agreed to come back and play here next season, and coach and work on the ground like I've been doing this summer.

"We're on the brink of winning the Southern Premier League and I've really enjoyed myself here at BAT," he said.

And when Parlane returns next summer, his younger brother Michael, 22, plans to come too - with Lymington the likely venue for the Northern Districts wicketkeeper, who is currently playing in Norwich.