Club championship should be nail-biting affair

Press, 24 March 1984, Page 80

Club championship should be nail-biting affair

Theoretically, five teams remain in contention when the final round of the Chancery Finance senior Christchurch cricket championhips starts this morning. They are Old Collegians, which has 45 points, Old Boys on 42, Burnside-West 41, Sydenham 37, and St Albans 36.

The possibilities, when related to outright victories, first innings wins, first innings losses, and outright defeats, need computer treatment. But it is a happy chance that the top two teams are drawn against each other, at Hagley No. 3.

When these sides met in the first round, at the start

of the season, Old Boys won by five wickets in a lowscoring game. Since then, Old Collegians have done very well in defence of a championship it won last season. Today, unhappily, it will be without the gifted all-rounder Vaughan Brown, but it will welcome the return of Paul McEwan, Canterbury’s outstanding batsman this season.

Old Collegians have a successful opening batsman in Graham Sercombe, and will be led by Richard Leggat, who scored a century in the last two-day match, against East-Shirley. There were some doubts about the availability of the younger all-rounder Richard

Hartshorn, but there is every possibility he will P Old Collegians have a formidable bowling combination. Richard Wilson and Lindsay Forde have been outstandingly successful as medium-pacers and Hartshorn, Bill Lawrence, and Doug McMillan complete an impressive line-up. Old Boys must have a very good chance of success. Tony Blain, the wicketkeeper batsman, has returned to Motueka but Murray Mowat will be an adequate replacement as a ’keeper and a batsman. The captain of the successful Canterbury Shell Trophy team, Cran Bull, returns to the side, and with him

Dayle Hadlee, Ross Bayliss, deputy for Blain in recent matches, is not available and James Leggat and Brent Small will be playing second grade. Old Boys’ batting has been fallible this season, but Peter Rattray has shown fine form recently and so has the young Paul Hartland.

This should be a closelycontested game, with the emphasis on achieving an outright win, because neither side can afford to let the game lapse into solemnity for fear of those behind taking points. All is set — including the weather — for a splendid finish to an unusually close competition.