By Margot Butcher - Republished from Outright 56
Hamish Rutherford, Ollie Newton, Sophie Oldershaw, Greg Hay, Seth Rance and Jacinta Savage all have two things in common. Retirement over this past season, and staying loyal to one New Zealand Major Association throughout their career.
Collectively, they represent a wealth of almost 1,000 matches (996, to be precise!) in NZC Domestic competitions — Hamish Rutherford having played several County summers as well.
To pick out a few stats, he retired as the Otago Volts’ most capped T20 player (129 games). Hay finished as the Central Stags’ second most-capped first-class rep and runscorer (104 and 7,142, respectively). Savage pulls stumps after 97 one-day and 75 T20 Canterbury Magicians caps: only a handful have played more in either arena for the Mags.
Neil Wagner and Colin Munro have meanwhile formally farewelled the Blackcaps. Wagner remains available for Northern Districts next summer; Munro will continue starring around the world, but we whip out the calculator again and that’s a line drawn under 225 collective appearances for the Blackcaps from Wagner, Rutherford, Munro and Rance.
From a Test century on debut to finishing as one of the top all-time run scorers in all three formats for the Volts, Hamish Rutherford can reflect on plenty of highlights from 16 years of cricket. And, on a trough of tough times. The second part plays to one of the aspects of his career that means the most to him.
“I’m very proud that I played for Otago through my whole time,” he says.
“It was hard initially, with the facilities we used to have here — and it’s not easy when you don’t win trophies for that many years. Everyone likes winning. When you don’t win, you’re overthinking. Cracks open up, but I’d like to think I was resilient. Every April, I would sit down and look at stats, strip it all back, be brutally honest and try to pave a way forward. I was always trying to get better. Would it have looked different elsewhere? Of course, but the thing that held me here was that pride for Otago.”
He debuted at the end of 2008. At the start of that year, he’d been in Malaysia with a strong New Zealand Under 19 team at the World Cup. He put all his eggs in the cricket basket. He even skipped seventh form (Year 13 for you young ones) to play in Scotland. He did a little bit of work for his ex-Blackcap father Ken, who was Head of Sports Betting for Singapore Pools — on the way home, before getting accepted for an Architectural Draughting course.
“Then I was picked in the World Cup team. I asked if I could take those three weeks off, and they said, ‘No way’. So that was the end of my study dream.”
The young left-hander didn’t have an Otago contract for his first four years. He got by from working in cafés and bars, but eventually did a Bachelor of Applied Management. He’s now also just a few papers away from completing a Diploma of Construction Management, with Quantity Surveying as a side. But there was nothing concrete lined up in his post-cricket future until — just as the ‘R’ word was coming into sharp focus, a chance conversation last year led to him being invited to do a three-day-a-week internship that he ended up continuing into November.
Now, he has an entry level position with the same national project management company. The company is RCP, New Zealand’s leading provider of independent project management and strategic advisory services to the property and construction industry. They work on the client side, and in Dunedin they’re managing the new hospital build for Health New Zealand — a long-term project. Rutherford is starting out on the ground floor as Assistant Project Manager, working in an office for the first time.
“It’s my first proper job outside cricket, and I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to learn and the offer that came along with crazy good timing. A big change from cricket where you get feedback daily. What I’m discovering is that in a job, it’s not quite like that!”
Rutherford played all three formats for the Blackcaps, chiefly between 2012/13 and 2014/15, with a T20 recall in 2019. His Test ton on debut, 171 against England in Dunedin, was the perfect script, but would be his only New Zealand hundred.
He captained the Volts of course, made 5,207 first-class runs in 79 matches for them; 2,552 one-day runs from 77 games, 2,758 runs in 129 T20s. That includes a T20 century, eight Ford Trophy tons (knocks of 154 and 155), and 12 Plunket Shield hundreds, including a defining 239 at Uni Oval. There were a couple of agonising first-class 99s, too.
The Dunedin weather didn’t turn up for his Super Smash Volts swansong this summer, but it didn’t bother him. He’s southern, after all — doesn’t like fuss. The upside, now? More time with the kids. Gracie is six, Oscar, two. “I didn’t make it to one of Gracie’s birthdays until she was four, and kids love birthdays of course so to be able to be there from now on is going to be great. I’ve done school drop-offs and pick-ups for the first time. We’ve also sold our house and we’re building a new one.”
Rutherford helped coach club side the Albion Eagles this summer alongside Josh Tasman-Jones, but now he believes it’s time to step back.
“I do love cricket and I really enjoyed the ride. I’m fortunate and grateful to have had the career I did, including the hard times along the way. It all shaped the journey — and I really enjoyed my journey.”
•••
The past season also marked the end of a journey for Wellington paceman Ollie Newton. The 35-year-old put away his bowling boots after The Ford Trophy in Dunedin — where he’d grown up and played for the Otago Under 19s, before eventually making his T20 debut for the Firebirds in 2015.
His 2017 first-class debut was, in his words, even more “surreal”. He took three wickets in his first over (opening the bowling with Hamish Bennett at the Basin), and four in the session as Wellington rolled the Aces for 62 before lunch on the first day. Then Michael Papps went out and scored an unbeaten triple century in a monster record opening stand with Luke Woodcock.
Newton’s best figures ultimately came with the white ball: three one-day five-fors, including 6/33 two years ago in Palmy, and a bag against the Stags in the Super Smash at Pukekura, too. He enjoyed being part of a successful Firebirds group that’s won a lot of trophies over the past decade, back-to-back Super Smash titles included.
The respected lower order fighter retires with 60 first-class, 64 Ford Trophy and 39 Super Smash wickets in all, as well as a New Zealand A one-day wicket against India A.
“But when I sit back and reflect, it’s all about the people you played with and against, the friendships that you forge. That’s what stays with you. It’s a tough game, and I was fortunate over my entire playing career in Wellington to be surrounded by awesome players and staff who made managing the ups and downs of cricket a lot easier.”
A commercial law and accounting graduate, Newton’s successful business career — he worked full-time for a couple of years before gaining his first cricket contract, and kept working full-time during his off-seasons — has seamlessly transported him into life after cricket.
He’s now a year into his latest role: Commercial Manager for Gilmours, the major food and beverage wholesaler that’s been supplying supermarkets, grocers and dairies and so forth for more than a century, and is now part of the Foodstuffs empire. It sees him work closely with senior management to drive business performance across a landscape of seven cash’n'carry stores and ten distribution centres in the North Island.
It was an industry he was particularly interested in, with future aspirations of getting into the Foodstuffs ownership programme himself as a store owner. He and his wife also have two young mouths of their own to feed, both high energy boys under five.
Newton opted out of the Domestic contracting process ahead of last season after he recognised his own changing priorities. He committed to play white-ball only in his last summer, but he’s not going to be lost entirely to cricket — staying involved as an NZCPA Board Member.
“I’m not really a coach or anything like that, but I love the game and wanted to find my own way to stay involved,” he says.
“When you talk to people outside the cricket world about what this organisation is, and the service it provides for players, they’re always amazed. It’s pretty special, what we have, and it’s my way of giving back.
“And I’ll be on the bank next summer, watching the Firebirds.”
•••
Sophie Oldershaw leaves the Otago Sparks as a champion, having helped the team on the way to the Hallyburton Johnstone Shield crown this summer.
The tall leg-spinner with a rare and effective right-arm googly packed in 89 appearances across the two female formats from 2017/18. Devastating on her day, it’s hard to go past her best one-day bowling figures — a stunning bag of 5/19 — in 2019/20 against the Canterbury Magicians.
Often delivering crucial blows during the death overs, Oldershaw magically combined Sparks cricket with her full-on profession as a musculoskeletal physiotherapist, and retires at just 25 to pursue her off-field career.
Christchurch born and bred, Jacinta Savage meanwhile called time on her Magicians career in May, at 28. Savage’s right-arm pace produced 40 one-day and 39 T20 wickets in a 12-year career highlighted by her brilliant HBJ 6/18 in Whangarei against ND in 2020/21.
That stands as the second biggest haul in the Magicians’ history, behind only former White Fern Rebecca Steele’s freakish 6/8 in 2006. The most remarkable part is that for much of her early career for the team, Savage was behind the stumps as the team’s wicketkeeper in both formats. A true all-round cricketer and athlete, she could also chip in handy runs, retiring with seven one-day fifties.
The Stags have been a consistent first-class force over the last half dozen years, and lifted both white-ball trophies. Like the Blackcaps in the same period, the team has benefited from a tight core of senior players, but retirements are signalling a changing of the guard.
Greg Hay and Seth Rance both leave big boots to fill. Hay started as a Young Player to Lord’s in 2003, and hangs up his bat in 2024 on the cusp of his 40s. As a Plunket Shield captain and player, his outstanding record is all the more impressive given his track list skips over four years when he was theoretically in his prime. But his hunger was only extended by the four “lost years” when he bizarrely wasn’t playing Domestic cricket at all.
A change of coach in 2013 brought him back, and the rest, as they say, is history. He finished in March with 18 Plunket Shield centuries, and his final innings of 179 over three days will surely be worth a whole chapter in this season’s New Zealand Cricket Almanack. “Haysie”, the “Sweepologist” also came within a whisker, this season, of becoming the first Stags captain to lift three Plunket Shields. He’ll settle for two, alongside Vic Pollard.
Unlike Hay, Seth Rance sadly didn’t get to go out the way he wanted, following a devastating shoulder injury in the 2022/23 season.
A Lattimus dorsi tendon rupture is so rare that specialists only see a couple of cases a year in New Zealand. After surgery to re-pin the tendon, Rance initially had hopes of returning for the Stags in the 2023/24 white-ball summer. He got back on the park for his beloved Wairarapa, but it became clear that his body would no longer put up with the special rigours of top level bowling.
The king of late in-swing formally signed off from the Stags in March, more than a year after his last game. It was never easy, but he is proud of having conducted his entire professional cricket career from his small-town base of Greytown — a career highlighted by 10 BLACKCAPS appearances, 152 first-class wickets and 186 Stags caps across the formats.
His Super Smash bag of 5/19 was also one of many highlights, and he retires as the Stags’ second highest T20 wicket-taker, after Blair Tickner snuck past him this summer.
The NZCPA wishes our departing players the very best as you transition into new chapters of life. We are proud to have supported you throughout your wonderful cricket careers both on and off the park and look forward to supporting you in the next phase of your journey.