Collinge to replace Dayle Hadlee

Press, 4 July 1978, Page 28

Collinge to replace Dayle Hadlee

From

R.T. Brittenden

On tour for the N.Z.RA.

Taunton There was a stricken silence in the New Zealand dressing room at Taunton yesterday after the manager, Mr Barry Paterson, had told his team that Dayle Hadlee would be returning home. It was a sad moment for Hadlee and for his fellow players, but if the decision of the team management was made reluctantly, it was inevitable.

Hadlee will be replaced by Richard Collinge, who is expected to leave New Zealand within a day or two. Since he broke down in the first test against England in February <■ it has been a race against time for Hadlee, and now he has lost. He had little time after his back injury at Wellington to prepare for a fitness test required of him after his selection for the present tour, but he got through that. However, at Arundel in the second one-day preliminary match he suffered a recurrence of his injury, which was caused in the first place by a soccer injury sustained as a youth. He broke a leg and the legacy of it was having his right leg slightly shorter than- the left. This put telling pressure on his back. He did not appear in the first three major matches in England, but had to play at (Taunton in a make-or-break situation. Almost as soon as he started bowling he was in trouble and he continued through a 12-over first spell in pain.

The only happy note in Hadlee’s situation is that his injury need not mean the end of his first-class career.

The medical report received yesterday by Mr Paterson i suggests that there has been .

| a considerable improvement in Hadlee’s condition, and that he would be fully fit for bowling in about eight weeks.

Such a rest period could not be considered for a touring cricketer, so the 32-yean old Collinge will make his fourth major tour of England. Hadlee is likely to set off for Christchurch about July 11.