Sunday, 4 September 2005

The season ahead

The schedule for the New Zealand domestic season has been released, and you can review it here. One thing that immeadiately leaps to mind when you put this schedule alongside the international schedule is that finally some effort has been made to match these together. The State Shield one-day series starts just before the Sri Lankans arrive for ODI matches in late December. The first-class season begins in early December to allow national players to be involved and then takes a break until February and March - where it is nicely timed to peak at the same time as the test series against the West Indies.

The two schedules are still not ideally matched, it seems unfair to strip domestic sides of their international representatives just before the season's climax, but this is still a significant improvement over recent years where the national side was left without warm-up matches before international fixtures.

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