Cricket: Wanganui team named to play Manawatu

Dominic Lock will take over the Wanganui captaincy against Manawatu this weekend.

Cricket Wanganui's board will have a meeting after this weekend to try and address the continued exodus of players from the Air Chathams Wanganui representative team ahead of the home Furlong Cup match with Manawatu at Victoria Park.

Described in the press release as "off field problems this week", two more players in Collegiate's Ben Kelt, who played his last match for his school last weekend and Marist's Angus Dinwiddie have withdrawn from the team for the rest of the season.

They follow former captain Simon Badger, who withdrew after the Hawke's Bay game, along with Marist's Mark Fraser and Chris Stewart, who were also part of the preseason training squad.

Furthermore, Collegiate's Hadleigh O'Leary and Property Brokers United's Matt Simes, who scored an unbeaten 50 last weekend, are unavailable for this game but will hopefully still play representative cricket going forward.

"In consultation with the senior leadership group and with not much options available to them, with returning university students also unavailable, coach Hartley has not had the original squad to choose from," said development officer Dilan Raj.

Collegiate's Year 13 student Kashish Nauhria is therefore the latest schoolboy to get a callup, while the one blessing is the return home of Central Districts Under 17 rep Connor O'Leary to shore up the bowling with his medium pacers.

Neither Raj or team manager Andrew Lock would comment further on the continued personnel issues, which have continued unabated from last year despite young coach Charlie Hartley signalling his determination to halt the "lack of clarity when it came to attending games".

"Moving forward, Cricket Wanganui will take a hard look at its structure and the number of unavailabilities occurring," said Raj in the press release.

"We just have to get through this weekend," he said when asked for more.

"Board meeting first, and then we'll decide from there."

Wanganui's professional Ben Smith remains on the injured list for the Central Districts Stags and so cannot answer the SOS this time.

Nonetheless, there is still some handy talent amongst the loyal as Akash Gill returns from his stint with Central Districts A, while Collegiate's Sam Sherriff and Marist's John McIlraith bring solid batting form out of both the representative Chapple Cup and the club Coastal Challenge.

Hartley has also decided to give the captaincy to Watson's Tech's Dominic Lock, after being impressed with his man management and game awareness in the last Chapple Cup game against Horowhenua Kapiti.

Manawatu won't know much about Wanganui's problems and won't care to know after they bring solid form into the game after upsetting Taranaki for first innings points in New Plymouth on November 10-11.

Black Caps quick Adam Milne and Stags players Dane Cleaver, Navin Patel, Bevan Small and Dave Meiring are all available and have been playing plenty of upper tier cricket in the past few weeks.

Milne and Small will only be playing as batsmen as they have picked up injuries recently.

The Wanganui team is
Dom Lock (captain), Joel Clark, Akash Gill, Charlie Hartley (player/coach), Ross Kinnerley, Akhil Kumar, John McIlraith, Kashish Nauhria, Connor O'Leary, Chris Sharrock, Sam Sherriff, Thomas Walshe.