Canterbury back at the international crease

International men’s cricket returns to Canterbury for the first time in three years today when the United Arab Emirates and Nepal, of all teams, kick off the Cricket World Cup qualifying tournament in Rangiora.

Canterbury played South Africa in a Twenty20 match at Hagley Oval and the New Zealand women’s team hosted England at Lincoln but you have to go back to January 2011, a month before the Christchurch earthquake, for the last men’s international in the region, when Pakistan beat New Zealand at Lancaster Park.

That dam is about to well and truly burst, however, with today’s match the first of 17 in the region – seven group matches, nine Super Six matches and the final – in the next three weeks.

Seven of those fixtures will be played at Rangiora and five each at Hagley Oval and Lincoln, with Bert Sutcliffe Oval to host the February 1 final between the two teams who United Arab Emirates v Nepal, Rangiora Scotland v Hong Kong, Queenstown Kenya v Papua New Guinea, New Plymouth Netherlands v Uganda, Mt Maunganui will qualify for next year’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

World rankings suggest the Neth- erlands ( 12th) and Kenya ( 13th) are favoured to get to the final while unranked Scotland and Canada are the only other ICC ‘ Associate’ nations among the 10 teams hoping to qualify.

However, results of warmup matches at the weekend indicate the competition might be a lot tighter than the rankings suggest.

Kenya scraped past Nepal by one wicket with a ball to spare in their match at St Andrews College while the UAE hammered the Netherlands by six wickets and Uganda upset Canada by Maunganui.

Also today, Scotland play Hong Kong in Queenstown, Kenya play Papua New Guinea in New Plymouth and the Netherlands square off aganst Uganda in Mt Maunganui.

There are two pools of B with the top three teams in each pool after group play, which ends on January 23, going into the Super Six playoff matches which will all be played in Canterbury. The top two teams qualify for the World Cup and play the final on February 1.

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