Otago 'on a roll' to win well-attended warm-up match

No provincial warm-up match attracts interest like this. TV cameras, national selectors, and, possibly most surprisingly, fans, turned out in force to watch what may be the nucleus of the South Island's first-class teams for 2002/03, or may be a final footnote in New Zealand cricket history, when the chapter on the strike is written.

With the likes of Sir Richard Hadlee, Brian McKechnie, Denis Aberhart, Glenn Turner, Richard Reid and Michael Sharpe watching, 22 previously rather obscure young men had opportunities to impress as the players' strike hit its seventh week.

Although few looked in the class of the strikers, that does not necessarily mean the assembled schoolboys, country hopefuls and ambitious club cricketers are poorer players than the striking 50 ahead of them in the provincial reckoning, said one player, tired of the posturing of the striking pros and their representatives.

"There was never any doubt I would go for it," he said.

The idea of a new broom also appealed to many in the crowd at a hot and windy Dudley Park in Rangiora.

Canterbury began badly, after winning the toss and batting. They lost three wickets for only seven runs before strikebreaker No 1, Ben Yock, smacked 35 off 39 balls. That the burly former first-class wicket-keeper was second top scorer in the match showed the batting was not up to much.

Only Jeremy Kench (27) and Peter Borren (14 in a partnership of 49 with Yock) got on top of Otago's four right arm fast-medium bowlers and two spinners.

Both provincial coaches said they were disappointed in batting efforts that saw 272 runs scored in 83 overs for the loss of 17 wickets in the day.

Otago began worse, with David Hay, an 18-year-old from Amberley, who is unavailable on Monday and Tuesday because of bursary exams, taking three for seven for Canterbury off his first three overs.

Rapt to dismiss Pakistani Test player Mohammad Wasim leg before wicket, Hay's hero is Geoff Allott, who, ironically, as a member of the New Zealand Cricket Players' Association, is a leader in the call to be staunch in the strike.

But there was no denying Hay's chance to impress, although the fierce nor'wester caused the left-armer to bowl five wides in his seven overs.

"The young guys are learning so much, so it's quite an honour to go through what we've been through in a short period of time," Hay said.

When Hay and fellow North Canterbury opening bowler Brendon Donkers went off, Canterbury's rusty back-ups, Under-19 World Cup players Leighton Burtt and Borren, struggled to capture form on their return to bowling from injury.

Both are great prospects for Canterbury, and if nothing else, some of the youngsters selected in this game showed enough confidence, skill and resolution to put pressure on both the under-achieving provinces' professionals, if and when the old pros come back.

Otago's Robert King, 25-year-old younger brother of Auckland's Richard, and Grant Billcliff, brother of ex-Otago players Mark and Ian, added 59 for the fifth-wicket to settle Otago's reply.

King (71) hit three sixes and, when Billcliff (30) lobbed Borren to mid-on, survived a swirler on 24 to take Otago close to victory at 122/6, before he edged Donkers to Canterbury wicket-keeper/captain Paul Rugg, a player in Sharpe's Canterbury Country teams of the late 1990s.

"If we can improve each day, I'll be happy," said Sharpe, whose preparation this season, like the rest of the provincial coaches, has been wrecked by the strike.

"We're on a roll," joked Turner. "We won the last match last season and the first this." He felt the pitch didn't do much and worried that if both sides batting does not improve the plan for each province to bat a whole day on Monday and Tuesday is optimistic.

It may all be academic if positive noises about the end of the strike come to something this week, but for Hay and King, their performances today will do no harm in furthering their chances no matter what the competition.