Hastings’ injury concerns over pace pair

Adam Pye is definitely out of the trip to Chichester Priory Park in 1st Central Sussex Cricket League Division Two tomorrow (Saturday) with the back injury sustained in last weekend’s defeat by Billingshurst.

And Adam Barton is battling to shake off the bruised knee which limited him to just two overs in the same game.

See also: * Hastings suffer first defeat of season* Hastings quick to signal intent in promotion bid* Hastings make flying start with emphatic win* Rye reduce rivals to 9-5 en route to first win of termPriory coach Ian Gillespie said: “I think the worry going in to next week is the injuries to our seamers and we’ve not got depth in that area.

“That’s going to be a problem if Adam’s (Barton) knee doesn’t respond as we hope it will. We don’t want to be going there with one seamer and four spinners. That’s a challenge for us.

“Adam Pye pulled a muscle in his back with his bowling arm as he pulled through and he felt it spasm. There’s a slight tear and it depends how bad the tear is.

“He’s been told to rest for a week and then start moving it around to see how it responds. But we have to be careful because we don’t want to lose him for the season.”

Gillespie felt the injury to Pye was ‘massive’ in last weekend’s home defeat.

The tall fast bowler had taken 3-4 from three overs and helped reduce the opposition to 68-5 before being forced out of the attack by a back injury.

Billingshurst went on to make 174 all out before dismissing Priory for 140 to claim a 34-run victory.

Gillespie said: “The injury to Adam Pye was massive. He was in a great rhythm and was virtually unplayable at that point. He got everything right. If we got another wicket then (after Billingshurst were 68-5), I don’t think they would’ve got much over 100, 120.

“Adam Barton was carrying an injury and limping around too so we were two seamers down on a good wicket that probably favoured seam and didn’t turn throughout. But all our spinners bowled well.

“I think we held it together pretty well in the field. Perhaps we weren’t quite competitive enough; there was an element of expecting things to happen. But I thought Tom (Gillespie, captain) managed the side quite well in the circumstances.

“It was certainly a competitive score, and they bowled and fielded with lots of enthusiasm, and probably got into us a little too easily at the top of the order.

“When we did get batsmen in, we were too blase. We almost treated it like a Twenty20 and lost wickets to shots which we didn’t need to play in the circumstances.

“We battled quite well and I thought Greg (Devlin) batted beautifully, but we didn’t do enough at key times to save the day.”

It means Priory sit third in the early league table, 18 points behind joint leaders Billingshurst and St James’s Montefiore.

“I think it’s going to be a reasonably competitive league,” added Gillespie. “If we’re going to get up, we’ve got to keep winning.

“Everybody’s upbeat and positive. We’ve played some good cricket; just one or two bits that haven’t been as good as we would like.”