Clingeleffer's selection points way to future

Tasmania's selectors have pointed clearly to the future by today installing Sean Clingeleffer as their new wicketkeeper for the opening match of the 2000-01 domestic season.

Clingeleffer's selection, which comes at the expense of long-time Tigers gloveman Mark Atkinson, is the key note of the naming of a fourteen-man squad to travel to Adelaide for a series of trial games and the opening match of the state's Mercantile Mutual Cup programme.

An excellent 'keeper and aggressive batsman, Clingeleffer has already made a huge mark in underage ranks and with Tasmanian second eleven teams over recent years. He created particularly favourable impressions as a regular member of state under-17 and Tasmanian and Australian under-19 teams between 1995 and 1999. His performances on the national underage team's tour of England in 1999 - which featured a superb 135 against England at Chester-le-Street - were especially noteworthy. Long regarded as one of the nation's most exciting young players, the twenty year-old is thought to have been close to winning a senior state cap for some time now.

Also in line for debut appearances for Tasmania are ex-Victorian paceman David Saker and former Canberra Comets batsman Graeme Cunningham. Saker was the target of a lucrative recruiting offer in the off-season from the Tasmanians, while Cunningham chose to move south after the Comets were axed from the one-day competition at the end of the 1999-2000 summer.

For Atkinson, meanwhile, this decision shapes as possibly the end-point of a stint in interstate ranks which has seen him play ninety-four first-class and thirty-five one-day games for his adopted state. A clearer indication of where his future lies will probably not emerge until later in the month, however, when the Tasmanians choose their eleven for their opening first-class match of the season in Brisbane on 26 October.

The Tasmanians will play three trial matches against the Commonwealth Bank Cricket Academy (on 9,10 and 11 October) before commencing their Mercantile Mutual Cup commitments with a clash against South Australia at the Adelaide Oval on 14 October.

The full squad is: Jamie Cox c, Dene Hills v-c, Clingeleffer, Cunningham, Gerard Denton, Michael DiVenuto, Andrew Downton, Andrew Dykes, Scott Kremerskothen, Daniel Marsh, Saker, Ben Targett, Damien Wright, Shaun Young.