Ideal preparation for series —Canterbury captain

Press, 16 December 1985, Page 44

Ideal preparation for series —Canterbury captain

Despite the eventual outcome of his first match in charge of Canterbury, John Wright expressed general satisfaction at the way his representative one-day cricket team is shaping for the Shell Cup series this summer. Canterbury went down to Wellington by five wickets in its annual fixture at

Burnside Park yesterday, but Wright believes the match presented the ideal preparation for the Shell series, which begins with a match against Auckland at Ashburton on December 27. "I felt we did very well to get right down to the last over,” said Wright, referring to Wellington’s win with four balls of the match

remaining. He had been hoping to leave Wellington a target of about 200, but three run-outs in the top six batsmen had left Canterbury a difficult task to give Wellington a testing assignment. Wright pointed to a lack of concentration, which resulted in the run-outs, as one factor which will need to be worked on.

“Our middle order is full of stroke players, and if we don’t make those sort of mistakes, we should get a lot of runs,” he said. He admitted to being happy with the match from his own point of view. Events at Burnside Park indicated a likely evenness among the teams in the Shell Cup, he added.