Stags ready for Plunket Shield
At a glance
Central Districts are slowly becoming a battle-hardened outfit under coach Heinrich Malan.
Malan is heading into his fourth season as Stags coach and he has built a team of young players who have been on the domestic circuit for a few years, with most of the team still in their early and mid 20s.
CD start the season with their first Plunket Shield game against Otago tomorrow in Nelson and CD will have the core of the team that was involved in winning the past two one-day cricket competitions.
It is the same bunch that weren’t as successful in the Twenty20s (fourth) or Plunket Shield (fifth).
‘‘Now we’ve built our young squad into an experienced squad, they’ve shown they’re really capable over the last couple of years and that consistency now becomes important,’’ Malan said.
"Over the next five months there will be a little bit less chopping and changing over the formats this season, whether we’re playing red-ball or white-ball cricket.’’
CD will have to wait until January to defend their one-day title, but before that have to focus on the four-dayers and Malan didn’t think there was extra pressure to improve in the longer format.
‘‘I think we’ve grown as a squad over the last couple of years and got a lot more experienced and mature cricketers now. And again we’ve trained really hard this winter to make sure we’re really conditioned to playing red-ball or white-ball cricket.
‘‘There’s no specific focus; all three competitions are important. To win any of them is fantastic.
‘‘There are a lot of players that go through their whole careers and never win anything. We want to compete in all three.’’
CD used 32 players last season, mainly due to injury, which Malan doesn’t want a repeat of, but he also believes it has them in good stead.
‘‘We had to expose some more guys during last season who played a lot more games and got the feel of what first-class cricket is about.’’
Malan wants players who come in not just to be making up the numbers, but to be able to put them in positions to win games.
He believes they have a balanced squad with a lot of bowling depth, which has been Central’s strength recently, they have just struggled to keep their bowlers fit.
CD go into this weekend with five specialist batsman, wicketkeeper batsman Dane Cleaver and five bowlers.
But Malan doesn’t believe they are a batsman short and has faith in the batting skills of bowlers like Ben Wheeler and Ryan McCone.
Malan was pleased with what he saw at the Chapple Cup one-day tournament last weekend, the CD championships, from the Stags players and the wider squad members, calling it the best Chapple Cup he’s seen in his four years.
CD are missing George Worker and Adam Milne, both with elbow injuries, Doug Bracewell and Ross Taylor on international duty and Navin Patel, who has university exams.
Bevan Small is also out for the season following shoulder surgery.
Worker and Milne are likely to be back for the fourth round at the end of the month.
Jess Ryder, who only played limited-overs cricket last season, has a slight groin strain from Chapple Cup so is unavailable for the first five rounds of Plunket Shield, but should be fit for the Super Smash in December.
New recruit and experienced paceman McCone has been a welcome addition to the squad and this season could be a big one for Wairarapa seamer Seth Rance, who has been mentioned as possible Black Caps contender.
Andrew Mathieson is fully fit after a back injury last summer, as is Wheeler.
Central Districts: Greg Hay (Nelson), Ben Smith (Wanganui), Mitch Renwick (Manawatu), Will Young (Taranaki) captain, Tom Bruce (Taranaki), Dane Cleaver (Manawatu), Ben Wheeler (Marlborough), Seth Rance (Wairarapa), Ajaz Patel (Hawke’s Bay), Ryan McCone (Horowhenua-Kapiti), Andrew Mathieson (Hawke’s Bay), Blair Tickner (Hawke’s Bay).