Western Australia selectors will give Damien Martyn until the coin toss to prove his fitness for tomorrow’s Pura Cup cricket match against Tasmania at the WACA.
Andrew Hamilton25-Oct-2001Western Australia selectors will give Damien Martyn until the coin toss to prove his fitness for tomorrow’s Pura Cup cricket match against Tasmania at the WACA.Martyn threw a scare into the WA and Australian camps when he injured his thigh during his 108-run innings in WA’s five wicket loss to the Tigers in their one-day clash on Wednesday.The Warriors shielded Martyn from the media today but Australia’s chairman of selectors Trevor Hohns said he had received an update this morning and the newswas not as bad as first thought.”They (Warriors’ medical staff) think it is just a bit of muscle tiredness from overuse,” he said.Should Martyn’s injury fail to respond, the spotlight would fall on team-mate Simon Katich with the first Test against New Zealand less than a fortnight away.Katich has had a poor start to the domestic summer but he is now entrenched as the next-in-line, a role Martyn filled for two years before cementing his position at the expense of Warriors team-mate Justin Langer on the Ashes tour.Langer fought his way back for the final Test and should retain his place ahead of Michael Slater at the top of the order after a fighting century at The Oval.But both would be hoping for some runs this week as several of the nation’s leading batsmen have embarked on run feasts to start the Australian summer.One such player is Tigers captain Ricky Ponting who followed back-to-back centuries in the Pura Cup match with NSW with a classy 102 here on Wednesdaynight.But in addition to Ponting, regulars Mark Waugh and Matthew Hayden have been amongst the runs while Test hopefuls Brad Hodge, Greg Blewett, Martin Loveand Jamie Cox are all in good touch.Ponting said the Tigers had taken plenty of confidence from Wednesday night’s game and hoped to build on their solid four-day form against NSW.”We played well in our last four-day game, to get two points down in Sydney was a pretty good effort against a strong NSW side,” he said.”So we’ll go into the game fairly confident.”Warriors captain Adam Gilchrist said it was too early to sound the alarm bells after following losses to Queensland in both forms of the game as well as the loss to the Tigers.But he admitted it was time the much vaunted batting line-up began to deliver.”I think we’ve got to, as individuals, assess whether you’ve given yourself the best chance to play well enough,” he said.”I think we’ve all prepared well enough but when we’ve got into the game we probably haven’t executed what we’d talked about as well as we should have.”Teams:Western Australia (from): Adam Gilchrist(c), Justin Langer, Murray Goodwin, Mike Hussey, Simon Katich, Damien Martyn, Marcus North, Ryan Campbell, ScottMeuleman, Brad Williams, Jo Angel, Sean Cary, Gavin Swan.Tasmania (from): Ricky Ponting (c), Jamie Cox, Graeme Cunningham, Michael Dighton, Sean Clingeleffer, Dene Hills, Adam Polkinghorne, Josh Marquet, DanielMarsh, David Saker, Shane Watson, Damien Wright, Shaun Young, Andrew Downton, Brad Thomas.
