'I'm not finished yet,' says Cairns

Chris Cairns has reacted angrily to suggestions that his career could be over after he was dropped from the one-day squad to tour South Africa. He suggested that those eager to write him off would be better off waiting until the 2007 World Cup was over and done with.

With the selection panel opting for James Franklin instead, Cairns now faces an uncertain future. Unfazed, he told The New Zealand Herald: "I'm not finished yet, and I certainly don't feel washed-up. I probably underestimated the effect of not playing first-class or Test cricket, but this has forced the point now; it's effectively asking me: how much do you want this?

"Well, my answer is that I want it a lot, to the extent that I'll now play for Canterbury in first-class cricket as well as the one-dayers in a bid to force my way back into the squad."

Cairns, who made his debut way back in 1989, has represented New Zealand in 208 ODIs, but had limited impact in the Tri Series in Zimbabwe last month where he tweaked a hamstring before being used as a substitute in the final against India.

Cairns admitted that John Bracewell, the coach, had already talked to him about the possibility of being omitted. "At the start my ego jumped in and I questioned a couple of things but there's no doubt that I was behind the eight-ball in Zimbabwe, I was a liability over there and I was as frustrated as anyone else," he said. "But I'm pretty stubborn and this is allowing me to find out what's inside. It's a testing time for me, but I understand that the game owes me nothing. Chris Cairns owes the Black Caps, it's not the other way around."

Bracewell himself called it one of the toughest calls he had had to make. "We sat down for a long chat about the issue and it was a pretty tough hour for both of us, because we go back a long way," he said. "It could have gone two ways; he could have said 'well, that's it I'm retiring' or he could have accepted the challenge. Thankfully he opted for the latter.

"I mean, it isn't necessarily a terminal problem because there is an obvious solution: he just needs to play more cricket."