Sideline Sid Sports correspondant & historian www.sunlive.co.nz

In a Mount Maunganui holiday season, where the weather has been all over the place, the Bay Oval was blessed with two outstanding days when the Black Caps squared off with Sri Lanka last week.

The hard slog of turning a wilderness area of Blake Park into the countries newest international cricket venue came to fruition last Tuesday and Thursday.

The first sod for the Bay of Plenty Cricket headquarters was turned on the first day of March 2005, with international cricket (against South Africa) being played just 10 years later in October 2015.

It took just two days for the Bay Oval record attendance to be broken.

A near 7000 crowd for the one-day match was surpassed when 7845 patrons attended the sold out T20 game.

Both games were good contests before the Black Caps prevailed, with the T20 an absolute thriller with the home side sneaking home by just three runs.

Our local Black Cap superstars in Trent Boult and Kane Williamson were both in grand form on their home ground.

Kane Williamson had the added burden of captaincy added to the expectations of his legion of Western Bay fans and he responded in style, with a half century in both encounters.

Trent gave his critics, who said he was off the pace this season, a big serve, grabbing key wickets in both games and the Man of Match award in the T20 thriller.

Coincidently, Kane blasted the first century on the Bay Oval, blasting 131 for the Bay of Plenty Under 19's against Waikato Valley in March 2007.

For Sideline Sid, the proposed development of the proposed winter sports stadium would give the Western Bay the final piece in a jigsaw of top class sporting facilities, to go with the Bay Oval and the ASB Arena at Baypark.

For mine, the perfect place for a boutique winter sports stadium is Blake Park.

The two games at the Bay Oval were easy to get to with plenty of easy walking parking near the ground, which ticks many of the boxes for local sports fans.

Just a big six across the road from the Bay Oval is a good example of grassroots cricket.

The Mount Maunganui Cricket Club, which relocated last year to share facilities with the Mount Rugby, caters for a myriad of junior cricket team up to senior players with aspirations of playing professional cricket.

In my book, one of the real strengths of the Mount cricket club is their promotion of promising secondary school players into their premier team ranks.

A prime example is current Baywide team captain Nick Smith, who made his debut for Mount first eleven while attending Mount Maunganui College.

Twenty years later he is leading the Mount challenge to retain the prestigious Williams' Cup this season.

A group of youngsters in Kyle Dovey, Blair McKenzie and Luke Tatley have all played for the Mount premiers while still at College, in the last couple of seasons.

Kyle has gone on to make his Bay of Plenty Senior Men's side debut last season, while Blair has recently been named in the ND Under 17 team, to play at the NZ Cricket National tournament in Canterbury this week.