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ADELAIDE - Andrew Symonds is favoured to take his place in the Australian side for Friday's first Chappell-Hadlee Trophy cricket match at Adelaide Oval despite an ankle complaint.
Less fortunate though is Brad Hodge, whose faltering international claims received another blow via the freakish back injury that kept him out of last night's Twenty20 blitz of New Zealand at the Waca.
The final phase of the win was soured somewhat by the sight of Symonds hobbling around on a tender ankle after twisting it in the field, but he showed few signs of the injury when walking to the team bus at Adelaide Airport yesterday.
Allrounders James Hopes and Brad Hogg and batsman/keeper Brad Haddin are all capable of stepping up should management decide not to risk Symonds, but middle order contemporary Michael Hussey was confident the pair would be seen batting together on Friday.
"From what I've heard he's pretty good," Hussey said.
"I know he'll be getting physio over the next couple of days at training, but he seemed pretty confident this morning, he wasn't too worried at all."
Symonds had previously rolled the ankle during Australia's 2-0 test series win over Sri Lanka, meaning some caution is likely to prevent the injury from becoming a regular occurrence.
There was nothing regular whatsoever about Hodge's injury, which resulted in a surreal call-up for West Australian left-hander Luke Pomersbach, who just happened to be at the ground on the day.
Stories vary on how exactly Hodge was felled, including one version of events that had him straining his back while pulling up his trousers.
Hussey though said the injury had been innocuous in the extreme.
"Hodgey was desperately disappointed and pretty sore, it was an amazing injury, so innocuous, but he was disappointed not to be playing because it was such a fun night," Hussey said.
"I was standing a couple of metres away from him, he almost just went down to pick something up and something seized up in the lower part of his back."
Not selected for the Chappell-Hadlee series, Hodge flew home to Melbourne today with the uncomfortable thought that he may not see international action again this season.
- AAP
