Former first-class cricketer John Cushen is putting together an Otago team to compete in the second national 60-plus cricket tournament in Wellington in February.
A national team will be selected during the tournament and that side will travel to Australia to play in a tournament.
That is the carrot Cushen hopes will bring the veteran cricketers out of the woodwork. But the recruitment programme has hit the skids and he reached out to the Otago Daily Times last week.
"I sent notices to all the clubs and I’ve rung 30 or 40 ex-first-class cricketers, with very little interest, but we are getting a number of club cricketers. But I’m probably four or five short," Cushen said.
Cushen has seven ‘‘definites’’ on his list and about that many again who are in the "maybe" category.
Cushen enjoyed a long and successful first-class career for Otago and Auckland between 1968 and 1987. He took 194 first-class wickets at an average of 28.77, and played 33 one-dayers as well. His other claim to fame is coaching the King’s High School First XI which included a promising young lad called Brendon McCullum.
Cushen played with Brendon’s father Stu and has plenty of connections in the required age bracket. But so far he has only been able to rope in one former Otago team-mate, Paul Facoory, who opened the batting for Otago from the late ’70s through to the mid-’80s.
Cushen said there was hope for those pushing 60 but not quite at the milestone as the team was likely to get dispensation for those 57 and above.
