REPRESENTATIVE captain James McNeil will be fit and raring to go for the SCG Cup quarter-final.
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McNeil missed Sunday’s thriller Riverina final against Wagga after a bad reaction to antibiotics.
McNeil and coach Trent Ball will have a hard time trying to whittle down a squad of 20 for the quarter-final on December 28
“The toughest thing going forward is picking the team,” Ball said.
“I’ve got three or four blokes who couldn’t play that are now available, so I’m going to need to sit down and work out what’s going on there.”
“James had a bad to reaction some antibiotics and was in bed all day Sunday unfortunately.
“I was giving him updates every over once it got pretty tight towards the end, so he’s pretty relieved we got through.”
Cricket Albury-Wodonga veteran Andrew Lade is among the 20-man squad for the SCG quarter-finals 8, after his heroics with the bat against Wagga on Sunday.
Lade belted 98 runs in his first representative game in a decade.
He scored 75 the day before with Tallangatta.
Lade is on track to score more than 1000 runs for Tallangatta this season.
In seven matches the in-form batsman has made 597 runs and taken 14 wickets.
“It was good to see that he applied himself to rep cricket just as much as he does to his club cricket,” Ball said.
“That’s one of the hardest things we try to get across to guys playing rep cricket — to always value their wicket.”
“It would have been at least 10 years since Andrew last played a rep match.”
“It was great to watch, he batted really well.”
CAW has been seeded second in the quarter-finals and will face seventh-seed Tamworth.
The other quarter-finals are Hamilton Wickham (1) v Terrigal Matcham (8), Lake Illawarra (3) v Corrimal (6) and Queanbeyan (4) v Dubbo (5).
The 20-man squad consists of Nat Sariman, Ash Borella, Andrew Lade, James Tonkin, Steve Wood, Mat Armstrong, Brendan Simmons, Mitch O’Brien, Ashan Ranaweera, Paul Connolly, Cameron White, Ryan Brown, James McNeil, Robbie Jackson, Luke Restall, Mark Butters, Sam Harris, Jason van de Merwe, Trent Ball and James Saker.
The quarter-finals will be played at Kiama on the South Coast with semi-final to be held the next day.
