Cricket: Trio back for Aces

The Auckland Aces will welcome back Michael Bates, Dean Bartlett and Colin de Grandhomme for their Plunket Shield clash with the Otago Volts starting on Friday at Colin Maiden Park. Bates and de Grandhomme were on national duty last week and Bartlett was ruled out through injury for their last-round loss to the Central Stags. Chris Martin is unavailable for this round due to Black Caps commitments while Daryl Tuffey and Tim McIntosh missed out on selection. That loss to the Stags earlier in the week means that the pressure is on the Aces to record a win against the Volts this weekend to keep their title hopes alive. Aces coach Paul Strang is happy to have two of his strike bowlers back and confident that the team can put together a winning performance. "I thought that we played really well in some testing conditions in Napier. We didn't get the result we wanted but our performance is pretty much at the level it needs to be for us to win games. We got a good result against Otago a few weeks ago so we're looking forward to trying to make it a repeat performance up here.'' Auckland Aces: Gareth Hopkins (c), Dean Bartlett, Michael Bates, Brad Cachopa, Colin de Grandhomme, Anaru Kitchen, Mitchell McClenaghan, Bruce Martin, Colin Munro, Neal Parlane, Jeet Raval, Bhupinder Singh.