Wellington, M.C.C. Below Strength For Today’s Game

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29401, 31 December 1960, Page 11

Wellington, M.C.C. Below Strength For Today’s Game

(New Zealand Press Association)

* WELLINGTON, December 30. The M.C.C. should, open its third match of the four in fine weather at the Basin'Reserve tomorrow morning. After a most threatening couple of days the weather improved late today and for the first two days reasonable conditions are promised. Wellington go into the match with a rather unsettled representative background. Even in its outright victory over Central Districts, there were rather many periods of depression for comfort. Wellington will go into the match without the left-arm spinner L. Butler, who had a hand badly bruised in the match against Canterbury and J. W. Guy who was also injured in Christchurch today. Coming into the side to replace Butler is former New Zealand representative E. W. Dempster—more than an adequate replacement as a bowler. No replacement for Guy has yet been named.

There is extreme doubt, too. whether the wicket-keeper. T. G. McMahon, who suffered a cut eye in the Canterbury match, will play. His replacement, if necessary, will be the Hutt Valley man I. J. Therkelson.

It had been previously announced that the Wellington team chosen for the first shield match of the season would be retained for the Canterbury match and the match against the M.C.C. In the two early matches G. M. Aim was named as twelfth man. It seems almost certain now that Aim will go into the side for today—possibly at the expanse of E. J. Sigley. The three who will probably be omitted from the M.C.C. side are D. R. W. Silk, W. Stewart and J. H. Parks. Silk will be out for two more weeks with his

broken finger and both Stewart and Parks have strained thigh muscles. Silk said today that the side had been impressed with the standard in the Auckland match. "We were rather beset by injury and were pretty raw, but we were impressed," he said. Silk, an accomplished Rugby player as well as a cricketer, missed by the barest margin playing against the 1953 All Blacks in their British tour. He was' selected for Cambridge in the match after the university had played the New Zealanders. Silk played his way through to England reserve trials as a centre in 1957-58. He was more enthusiastic, though, about the Rugby ability of Stewart—"l believe he would have represented Wales as a centre had he not been injured."