Hamilton won the Hawke Cup final today to claim the prize of New Zealand minor association cricket for the first time since it was formed in 1976.

Hamilton previously was part of the Waikato association but has gone it alone for 26 years and has had several challenge matches without success over the years.

It got home by seven wickets at Galloway Park today after it was set a target of 165 runs by Hawke's Bay today.

Behind by 37 runs on the first innings, Hawke's Bay failed to get more than 201 runs on the board in their second innings, although when Hamilton lost three wickets for eight runs to be 44/3 there must have been a faint flicker of hope in Hawke's Bay breasts.

However, Grant Robinson and Brooke Hatwell produced a fine 123-run fourth wicket partnership to steer their side through to the win, just after 4pm today.

Earlier, Hawke's Bay captain Craig Findlay had led his side's hopes of setting Hamilton a competitive total by scoring 56 off 73 balls to be the last man out.

Bruce Martin was the key man for Hamilton, taking five wickets for 72 off 23 overs while Simon Andrews backed him up with three for 71 and Jayden Hatwell took two for 20.

Hamilton captain Adil Somani said, "We knew Hawke's Bay would be a bit nervous about the wicket so we put them in.

"It was a good opportunity to put the pressure on them. They were cautious and we kept it tight by bowling maidens and that created more pressure.

"We knew 165 was a competitive target and our approach was that we had to go out and get the runs without playing risky shots," he said.

Somani praised the effort of Brooke Hatwell, an 18-year-old, who arrived at the wicket with Hamilton 44/3, to go on and score 75 not out off 106 balls.

Opener Grant Robinson scored 67 not out off 167 balls.

Hatwell and bowler Simon Andrews were two players who had huge potential to be good first-class cricketers, he said.

Somani said the scores in the final probably did not reflect the flat nature of the pitch used in the game, a pitch he said that was better than that used for the semi final in which Hamilton beat Canterbury Country to qualify for the final.

Findlay said Hawke's Bay had let themselves down by not getting enough runs on what he described as, "a great pitch."

He praised the efforts of Hawke's Bay's players this year saying no team other than Hamilton had scored more than 200 runs against them.

Just how Hamilton will defend its hold on the Cup will be decided at a meeting of New Zealand's minor associations.

This year's series of games to produce a final was the third time a Cup winner was found by other than a challenge system.

When the Cup was first contested in 1910/11, a six-match tournament was won by Southland. They resisted one challenge issued over two summers and in a bid to keep interest in the Cup up, another tournament of four matches was played in 1912/13 and was won by South Auckland.

Since that time the Cup had been contested as a challenge trophy, until last year's decision to stop having Metropolitan sides take part in the Cup, resulted in the need for a tournament-type concept to be played to find a deserving winner.

Reverting to a challenge system seems the most likely concept for next summer.

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