Long-standing New Zealand cricket identity, and former chairman of New Zealand Cricket, Walter Hadlee admitted to having a guilty conscience over the fate of the Plunket Shield today.

The Plunket Shield was the main trophy in New Zealand cricket, being awarded after the annual first-class round-robin series each year.

It was superseded in the game when a new sponsorship arrangement for the first-class programme was entered into with Shell, which resulted in the Shell Trophy and Shell Cup being the main prizes on the domestic scene.

Hadlee, speaking at the New Zealand Cricket annual meeting today at the High Performance Centre at Lincoln University, said he was asked by the then board of the old New Zealand Cricket Council to write to the current Lord Plunket to advise him of the changes on the domestic scene and the future of the Plunket Shield, which had been presented in 1908 by Lord Plunket, the Governor-General of New Zealand.

"I said that we would have at least a biennial North-South Island match for the Plunket Shield.

"I got a rather curt reply that suggested that money had taken over.

"I wrote back to him and reassured that we would meet that commitment.

"I've got a guilty conscience now that we've never honoured that commitment.

"There must be a place for the Plunket Shield," he said.

Hadlee also said that he had been spending time recently researching the history of the Heathcote-Williams Shield, the cricketing version of rugby's Moascar Cup, which was the challenge trophy among the country's secondary schools.

He was informed by Wellington cricket historian Don Neely that both the Plunket Shield and the Heathcote-Williams Shield were held in the New Zealand Cricket Museum based at the Basin Reserve in Wellington.

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