Hadlee available

Press, 14 December 1977, Page 52

Hadlee available

The chances of the High School Old Boys’ senior cricket team winning its match against St Albans on Saturday have been raised considerably with the availability of its international allrounder, Richard Hadlee. Hadlee would, but for a leg injury, have been in Invercargill with the Canterbury team for the first match

of the Shell series this weekend. If this had been the case, Old Boys would have taken the field for the second day of its club match with Geoff Allen replacing Dayle Hadlee and another player filling in for Richard Hadlee. However, a spokesman for the Old Boys’ team, Cran Bull, said last evening that

Hadlee was picked for both days of the club match. “It was simply a situation where we had to name a possible replacement last Saturday. But at that stage, it seemed likely that Richard would not be able to play for Canterbury’,” said Bull. The chairman of the Canterbury Cricket Association’s competitions committee (Mr N. G. Ockwell) said that as far as his committee was concerned it had no objection to Hadlee playing. “We certainly can’t say that the club has to play a replacement player. A replacement was only named if Hadlee was not available,” said Mr Ockwell. He said that the C.C.A. did not have a ruling on this type of occurrence. He added that as long as Old Boys was not trying to gain an unfair advantage over St Albans, no problems would eventuate. Although Bull said that he felt it was very unlikely that Hadlee will bowl, Mr Ockwell said that Hadlee was quite free to. However, he added, if Hadlee did bowl, the Canterbury selectors may not be particularly pleased. Last Saturday, Hadlee was one of three successive batsmen to make a “duck” in Old Boys’ first innings, and he did not bowl.