The men’s one-day Ford Trophy will, for the second straight year, get first crack at New Zealand’s domestic season. Play starts on 25 October, a good three weeks before the women’s Hallyburton Johnstone Shield (HBJ) gets going on 15 November.
New Zealand Cricket shuffled the running order last season, switching from the long-standing first-up four-day Plunket Shield. The idea was to mirror the international calendar and to give players different surfaces at different times of the year. By most accounts that tweak worked. “Aligning the domestic and international schedules by format was well received by the playing and coaching groups last year, so we’re continuing that this season,” said NZC chief cricket operations officer Catherine Campbell.
Shorter games first also made sense from a workload point of view. Campbell added: “It helped our domestic bowlers build-up their bowling loads initially through one-day cricket, which better prepared them for the physical demands of four-day cricket later in the season.”
This summer, the Ford Trophy will overlap with England’s white-ball visit, and the Plunket Shield will lead nicely into the Test series against West Indies in December. Conditions should follow the usual pattern: greener pitches and a bit of nip in the air early on, flatter tracks and bigger totals once February rolls around.
On the women’s side, the HBJ Shield begins not long after the ODI World Cup in India. That timing should mean a strong domestic line-up. “The WHITE FERNS will come back from the 50-over World Cup and we’d expect many of those players to be available for HBJ,” Campbell noted. A short North v South series, slotted in just before Christmas, will give selectors another look at fringe internationals.
Finals weekend is locked in at Wellington’s Basin Reserve. The men’s eliminator is pencilled for 20 February, followed by the women’s decider a day later and the men’s grand final on 22 February. In all, 14 grounds from Invercargill in the deep south right up to Whangārei will host one-day matches.
Canterbury’s men and the Otago Sparks women are both eyeing a third consecutive title, though neither camp is talking dynasties just yet. Coaches generally welcome the staggered schedule but admit it can feel disjointed, with the one-dayers interrupted by the first half of the Plunket Shield and then by the full Super Smash. Finding rhythm, said one provincial captain last season, is “half the battle in domestic cricket”.
Fixtures for the Plunket Shield arrive on 13 August and Super Smash dates follow five days later. Enough to mark in the diary, if you like planning ahead, but plenty of cricket still to be played before the medals are handed out.
