St David’s will be without all-rounder Justin Pitcher for tomorrow’s match against Cleveland at Wellington Oval, a match being dubbed as the “Battle of the Smith brothers”.

Pitcher suffered a groin injury in the win over Somerset last weekend and, with a bye next Sunday, the club have opted to rest him for two weeks before the crucial home match against Willow Cuts on June 15.

“We would prefer to rest him knowing we’ve got Willow Cuts in two weeks’ time,” Wendell Smith, the St David’s coach, said. “That gives him plenty of time to recover.

“He did try it out on Thursday, but we all decided to give him plenty of time to make sure he has healed from it.”

Luckily for St David’s they are well stocked in the seam-bowling department, where they still have George O’Brien, Rudell Pitcher and Angelo Cannonier.

“We have Angelo who can do some bowling for us and the skipper [OJ Pitcher] hasn’t bowled much, so in case we need some medium pace we have them,” Smith said. “Obviously our three spinners have been key for us this season.”

St David’s handily beat Cleveland in the Belco Cup semi-finals recently, although that was before Wendell’s younger brother, Clay, was confirmed as the new Cleveland coach.

“Having played us just two weeks ago, it will be interesting to see what changes he makes,” Smith said. “He sat and watched us for two straights weeks, so he has probably done a bit of homework on us.

“I would like to believe our players are up for the match. We have a few guys in red-hot form, with OJ Pitcher and Fiqre Crockwell looking really, really good; the best I’ve seen them. OJ has opened in both matches and seems to be enjoying it, so we’ll stick with him.”

Smith acknowledged that his players did not show the same sort of pre-game preparation as Somerset, which his brother mentioned yesterday in his weekly column for this paper. “We had a good warm-up for Belco Cup, but last week I had a few guys who had personal things to take care off,” he said.

“Hopefully this week we are back in order. It was a bit frustrating because we were at home and I have to give Somerset credit, they were out on the field warming up before us. In Bermuda now, we tend to just do it more so for big matches like Cup Match and Eastern Counties, but it would be nice if it was a regular feature in the league.

“They [the players] realised it had rained a lot that morning and that the match wouldn’t start at 11.00 — it started at 12.30 — so we still got a wonderful warm-up, starting at 10.30 instead of 10.00. You do want to be professional in your approach and it puts you in a good mental state.”

Cleveland had a bye last weekend, so this will be their league opener.

Another top match in the east end will feature Bailey’s Bay hosting Southampton Rangers at Sea Breeze Oval. Bay suffered another loss to Willow Cuts last weekend while Rangers were hammering St George’s by more than 300 runs. Ricky Brangman, the Rangers coach, expects it to be closer and Bay captain Stephen Outerbridge has promised a better performance this weekend.

“We definitely expect a tougher game from Bay,” Brangman said. “We’re full- strength for Sunday, morale is high and everybody is ready. It should be a good game.”

“It’s nice playing at Bay. Their fans always come out and support them, our fans support us and I’m anticipating a good game on Sunday. The Belco game [v Willow Cuts] was our first game and I’m hoping we have got the wrinkles out of that and that we can keep going forward from now on.”

In the other match, Somerset entertain Cuts, while in the two First Division matches tomorrow, Somerset Bridge play PHC at White Hill Field and Western Stars host Devonshire Rec at St John’s Field. The latter will be a preview to next weekend’s first match in the best-of-three Central Counties series.

One First Division match will be played today, with Warwick taking on Bermuda Under-17 at Southampton Oval.