Toss could be key for Stags

Central Stags coach Heinrich Malan knows his team’s mantra of sticking to their structures is a big cliche. But if it works, why change it?

After picking up a big Ford Trophy win over Northern Districts in Whangarei earlier in the week, the side looked to follow those same structures when they host the unbeaten Otago Volts in New Plymouth on Sunday.

‘‘It showed in that last game that if we stick to our structure and the boys buy in to executing the roles within that then we don special things because we have special players,’’ Malan said.

The side were without opening batsman George Worker in the first game of their white-ball campaign against Auckland last weekend, but he made his presence felt against Northern, belting 96 runs to go with Jesse Ryder’s 107.

Their bats will need to fire again at Pukekura Park as they come up against a team who are yet to be made to chase more than 253 runs - comfortably winning their opening matches.

Otago have won the toss and elected to bowl in both encounters this season, with young mediumpacer Jack Hunter collecting three wickets in both, while fast bowler Jacob Duffy has bagged five wickets over two matches.

The bats have helped on the back of their bowling, with Hamish Rutherford scoring a century already this season, as well as Rob Nicol, Anaru Kitchen and Shawn Hicks all posting scores of 50 runs or more.

‘‘You know, the toss is the start of the game. Sometimes you want to bat or bowl first. But, at the end of the day, the toss is the start of the game and you’ve got to do whatever - if you win it you can decide, if you don’t then you’ve just got to get on with it.

‘‘We don’t worry too much about who we play. For us, it’s more about the processes we put in place and how we want to play.’’

The Stags bring the same squad to New Plymouth as they fielded in Whangarei, with the exclusion of batsman Ben Smith.

However, Malan said just because they had the same squad doesn’t mean their batting line-up would remain the same.

In the first two games of the campaign, wicketkeeper Dane Cleaver has opened the batting. But with scores of 10 and 15 to his name and plenty of batting in the squad, there were a number of options at the top of the order.

‘‘It’s something we’ll assess again. We’ve obviously experimented with that in the last two games and I think if you look at our squad we could probably start at 11 sometimes and bat.

‘‘It’s good to have that flexibility and we’re testing a couple of combinations out.’’