Snedden hampered

Press, 10 February 1989, Page 40

Snedden hampered

Martin Snedden went back to the Basin Reserve yesterday afternoon for a self-imposed fitness test on the eve of the cricket test against Pakistan. The experienced New Zealand medium-pace bowler has been troubled by a hamstring injury to his left leg, and was moving gingerly during the fielding segment of the morning practice. “It doesn't feel too bad,” said Snedden after his bowling stint. But Snedden was not alone in speculating that he might not figure in the plans of the New Zealand selectors for this match. A borderline choice at best, the risk of Snedden aggravating his problem will probably torpedo his prospects. Another bowler also needs to drop from the squad of 13. Willie Wat-

son, also a medium-pacer, coould be the unlucky one, leaving Richard Halee, Danny Morrison, Ewen Chatfield, John Bracewell and Dipak Patel to share the work- “ Whereas we were inclined towards playing four seamers in Dunedin — though it never came to the crunch — we need a better balanced attack on this wicket,” said the New Zealand captain, John Wright yesterday. Pakistan, a little surprisingly, has retained the same 12 named for the aborted Carisbrook test, which means the touring selectors have rejected the claims of Ijaz Ahmed and Tauseef Ahmed, who both had injury worries in Dunedin. Neither the youthful Aaqib Javed nor the famed leg spinner Abdul Qadir trained yesterday

afternoon because of "slight niggles” in their shoulders. Qadir, also well known as a man who likes his rest breaks from even a moderately heavy cricketing diet, was perhaps in no hurry to revisit the Basin. It was a fielding incident in Wellington which led to his ejection from the 1985 tour. The teams are.— New Zealand: John Wright (captain), Robert Vance, Andrew Jones, Martin Crowe, Jeff Crowe, Dipak Patel, John Bracewell, lan Smith, Richard Hadlee, Danny Morrison, Ewen Chatfield, Willie Watson, Martin Snedden. Pakistan: Imran Khan (captain), Rizwan-Uz-Zaman, Shoaib Mohammad, Aamer Malik, Javed Miandad, Salim Malik, Mudassar Nazar, Saleem Yousuf, Abdul Qadir, Aaqib Javed, Saleem Jaffer, Ramiz Raja.