Hobart Hurricanes captain Matthew Wade says he is hopeful of having pace ace Riley Meredith back for the next game after he was only able to bowl one over against the Adelaide Strikers.
The Hurricanes are priced at 6/1 to win BBL11 but suffered a seven-wicket defeat to the Adelaide Strikers on Wednesday night.
Meredith setback
The Canes were already operating with a threadbare squad after losing players to injury and illness and the loss of Meredith after just one over was another big blow.
Speaking after the defeat Wade was unable to shed too much light on the nature of the injury but hopes to have Meredith available for Saturday's clash against the Brisbane Heat at the Gabba.
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"I'm not going to reveal (what the injury was) because I don't know if I can," Wade said after Wednesday's match.
"He felt a little sore in the warm-up so we let him bowl one over to try to get the breakthroughs early in the first six overs.
"It didn't pan out that way, (and) he was going off.
"We don't think it's a long-term injury but if he pushed through and did something long-term, we're pretty thin on fast bowlers at the moment, so we took the cautionary role in this game. We're really hopeful he'll play the next game."
Injury nightmare
The Canes went into the game with only Tom Rogers and Sandeep Lamichhane as out-and-out specialist bowlers and Wade says the selection problems are not helping their cause.
"We kind of looked after him (Meredith) and we ran out of bowlers to be honest in the end," Wade added. "We only had two of our frontline bowlers and we were making the rest up with our allrounders.
"We're starting to get thin on players."
