Doubt lingers whether Northland bowler Tim Southee will be available for Northern Districts in their Plunket Shield match against Auckland, which starts at Colin Maiden Park on Thursday. ND coach Grant Bradburn said yesterday he was preparing for the game as if Southee - suspended for two days for swearing -was available. However, the matter was still proceeding through a judicial process which would include clarifying if Southee's suspension was reduced to one playing day. If so, Southee's team contends he has already served the suspension by missing a game at the weekend. "His suspension has been appealed but we won't know until later what the result of that decision will be ... at the moment we'll be naming him in the squad when we release it ," Bradburn said. The idea that Southee would be available for ND this week - after working off his two-day suspension by skipping a club match for Maungakaramea on Saturday and then missing Northland's 50-over inter-district match against Hamilton on Sunday - didn't fly for Bradburn. "We weren't convinced that he would have been available for that club game anyway - he needed a rest on Saturday - so we wanted to do everything above board," he said. Southee had been suspended last Thursday after the ND-Wellington Plunket Shield at Seddon Park in Hamilton. It was reported that Southee had sworn loudly after being edged to the boundary by a Wellington batsman. Association Commissioner Gerald Bailey convened a code of conduct hearing following the close of play and found the incident was a clear example of unacceptable behaviour. A penalty of suspension for two playing days was handed down but according to New Zealand Cricket's Stephen Hill, the suspension was later amended to become just one playing
day. "The situation is at the moment that the penalty imposed by the commissioner stands but eventually that was determined to be a one-day playing penalty - an amended decision that came out late in the process," Hill said. Hill believed that the one-day penalty had already been served over the weekend.
