Club Play On Saturday May Be Debated Again

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30979, 8 February 1966, Page 19

Club Play On Saturday May Be Debated Again

The decision of the Canterbury Cricket Association’s management committee to play club matches next Saturday, the last day of Canterbury’s Plunket Shield match with Otago, may be debated at tomorrow night’s comm i 11 e e meeting, because the Sydenham club’s letter of complaint will come before it.

The committee's decision was probably based on the belief that its primary duty is to provide cricket for its cricketers. It has not been necessary, before, to play club games on a shield day, and this time there will be, for the senior grade at least, two spare Saturdays in March. Without a proper canvass, no-one could claim with conviction to know how many club cricketers would prefer to be at Lancaster Park on Saturday. When the committee’s decision was made, there was no indication of how the Wellington-Auckland

IBij R T> BRITTENDENI match would end, and there was every prospect of Canterbury’s last game being the deciding one. The announcement of the Canterbury teams for the shield match and the Rothman’s tournament which starts on Monday and ends on Saturday week (the, second day of the next club round) cannot have done much to strengthen the case for playing senior competition cricket, in a season in which an effort has been made to find a true champion, instead of allowing the luck of the draw to influence events unduly. In the shield match, the top team, Sydenham, has two players engaged. Old Boys have three—and one of them

will join three other members of his club side in the Rothman’s team. So that this team, which is in second place and almost certainly has to win its last two matches outright, will be without six of its best players on Saturday, unless those in the Rothman’s eleven play on the first day only. Old Boys, next week will meet either Sydenham or West Christchurch-University. West-University has two top players in the shield team, none in the Rothman’s tournament Lancaster Park loses only one- player in all. The committee’s decision has certainly devalued the championship’s last rounds, which is a pity, when so fine a finish had been in prospect.