The sun is shining, the evenings are getting warmer, the birds are chirping away in the trees and cricket bats are in heavy stock at all your local sports stores. The Summer of Cricket is fast approaching and NZC are well up on the hype train with a full international schedule published last week. You really can’t underestimate how tough it must’ve been on a logistical level to balance everything and get four touring international men’s sides and two more women’s international teams to our shores over the next several months, the fact that we’re getting an international summer at all is a blessing. Let’s hope those stadiums are able to be jam-packed throughout.

And yet something is missing. Something rather significant because for all the talk about the Blackcaps home summer the first T20 against the West Indies, which kicks the whole thing off, doesn’t happen until 27 November. Before then a chunk of the Windies squad have gotta arrive and quarantine for two weeks and then a few days later the rest of them plus a handful of Blackcaps have to do the same coming back from the IPL or wherever. Actual international cricket is still more than seven weeks away. There are a couple tour games involving a NZ-A team in the week prior (both in Lincoln – a three dayer and a four dayer) but that remains many ticks on the calendar away compared to the Plunket Shield.

The Plunket Shield is the most prestigious competition in domestic kiwi cricket and it’s supposed to start in two weeks... but we still don’t have a draw. Some information is out there in subtle ways because the teams seem to know what they’re expected to do but damn this is what we talk about on The Niche Cast when we talk about how the Plunket Shield, in fact all domestic cricket aside from Super Smash T20s (so... four-dayers, one-dayers, NZA cricket, etc.), is continually undermined by the folks who oughta be propping it up. It’s one thing to point out that the Plunket Shield can be expensive to run (the excuse for why they trimmed two rounds off it a couple years back) but could it possibly be, pray tell, that the competition isn’t being marketed to its full potential? Because how are fans meant to take it seriously if the organisers seem to wanna treat it like a burden and not a highlight? Come on, man.

Thanks to the Otago Daily Times, we know that the Volts’ first three fixtures look like this...

1. Auckland Aces vs Otago Volts, Auckland

2. Northern Districts Knights vs Otago Volts, Mount Maunganui

3. Wellington Firebirds vs Otago Volts, Wellington

And we also know that the domestic season will start on Tuesday 20 October, with the same format as last year playing four rounds before Christmas until the limited overs games take over and then the last four rounds will be at the end of the season. We’re talking March territory. That start date is also backed up by Eden Park’s website which lists that opening fixture against the Volts and also a home game starting on the 28th against Central Districts on their upcoming events page. But, like, we’re less than two weeks out from the start of the season. We shouldn’t have to go Sherlock Holmes on this shit.

On the positive, the Blackcaps should mostly all be available for the first couple rounds. The fellas at the IPL obviously won’t be (Williamson, Boult, Neesham, Santner & Ferguson) and there are the odd yarns out there about foreign-born guys like Dean Foxcroft for example who has been trapped in South Africa trying to get an exemption to get back into Aotearoa (he’s just signed a short term deal with a High School Old Boys club in Pretoria while he waits). But Hamish Rutherford’s back after tallying the runs up in England. Same deal with Caribbean Premier League blokes. Should be some bloody excellent quality on show... if only we knew where we could go to watch it.

Having said that, we do have a lovely run of Tour/A games coming up over the summer and these games are always sneakily awesome because: A) it’s the one place where playing longer form games doesn’t seem to be shunned, B) you’re getting to see that swelling wave of players just below the Blackcaps level against legit international opponents, C) there’s a tendency to take them to the regions, and D) they’re usually free to attend. Not sure if they’ll schedule more involving Bangladesh after the New Year, this is just what’s up on the NZC website at the moment...

• New Zealand A vs West Indies (Three Day Match) – Sat 21 Nov at Bert Sutcliffe Oval, Lincoln

• New Zealand A vs West Indies (Four Day Match) – Thu 26 Nov at Bert Sutcliffe Oval, Lincoln

• New Zealand A vs West Indies (Four Day Match) – Thu 3 Dec at Bay Oval, Mount Maunganui

• New Zealand A vs Pakistan A (Four Day Match) – Thu 10 Dec at McLean Park, Napier

• New Zealand XI vs West Indies A (Four Day Match) – Sat 12 Dec at Saxton Oval, Nelson

• New Zealand A vs Pakistan A (Four Day Match) – Thu Dec 17 at Cobham Oval, Whangarei

• New Zealand XI vs Pakistan A (T20 Match) – Wed 23 Dec at Cobham Oval, Whangarei

• Northern Districts vs Pakistan A (T20 Match) – Sun 27 Dec at Seddon Park, Hamilton

• Wellington vs Pakistan A (T20 Match) – Tue 29 Dec at Basin Reserve, Wellington

• Canterbury vs Pakistan A (T20 Match) – Fri 1 Jan at Bert Sutcliffe Oval, Lincoln

• New Zealand XI vs Pakistan A (T20 Match) – Sun 3 Jan at Bert Sutcliffe Oval, Lincoln

• New Zealand XI vs Pakistan A (T20 Match) – Tue 5 Jan at Bert Sutcliffe Oval, Lincoln

That’s one bit of friskiness about the NZC Summer Schedule out of the way. Another one is that none of the new media and promo appears to include the Dream11 sponsorship of the Super Smash. Yet the Dream11 logo still appears on the official website and social media accounts. Woulda figured the big season launch would be more cohesive than that but okay. Maybe that suggests it’s still an ongoing negotiation or something because with all the dramas going on at the financial level in sports these days the last thing an already cash-strapped org like NZC needs is to lose another major sponsor for its chosen domestic commercial priority.

Not that the Dream11 sponsorship ever made any sense to begin with. I’m guessing the large majority of kiwi cricket fans never even found out what Dream11 even meant. Spoiler alert: they’re an Indian based fantasy sports website. Highly doubt they got much bang for their Super Smash buck from that deal but as far as NZC should be concerned if the cheques were clearing then no dramas there. However if they do now need to scramble for a new Super Smash sponsor then that’d mean a fifth new naming rights partner in seven years since they rebranded this competition as the Super Smash. Not really ideal.

• New Zealand Twenty20 Competition – One season

• State Twenty20 – Three seasons

• HRV Cup/Twenty20 – Five seasons

• Georgie Pie Super Smash – Two seasons

• McDonald's Super Smash – One season

• Burger King Super Smash – Two seasons

• Dream11 Super Smash – One season

Ah yes, the good old HRV Cup, aye? Those were the days.

Actually you know what? Part of the Dream11 thing was that they were broadcasting games on Indian telly which is presumably where Dream11 was getting its value but of course since then the NZC broadcast rights have transferred from Sky Sport to Spark Sport so it could be that that’s the issue there. Hmm.

That’s all domestic cricket chat there but there’s one more thing to get to before we’re done and that’s the glorious tradition of One Day International cricket in Aotearoa. ODIs get pissed on a little by the simple-minded folks who can’t comprehend a continuing format in between T20s and Tests but so many of the most amazing moments of Blackcaps cricket have come in home ODIs. There’s just nothing quite like a close run chase under the lights in a day-nighter... that’s some of the best entertainment you could ever possibly hope for. And it just so happens we’re pretty good at them too. Only went and tied the bloody World Cup final a while back.

So why exactly is it that the Blackcaps are only scheduled to play three ODIs this summer? The first three teams that come to visit (Windies, Pakistan & Aussie) will all gap the scene without partaking in any 50 over games. It’s not until Bangladesh get here in March that we get that honour... this after a strange absence of ODI cricket last summer as well so you can’t just blame the pandemic.

Okay, you can blame the pandemic a little bit because we were supposed to be zipping past the Northern Hemisphere in mid-2020 to play a limited overs series against Ireland as well as ODIs against Scotland and Netherlands... not to mention the two ODIs against Australia that were abandoned due to lockdowns. The hope was that we’d reschedule those matches but with travel bubbles coming a tad too late and quarantine complications and all that NZC & CA tossed that one out the window. Also on the way back from Europe there was gonna be a three-ODI series in the West Indies as part of the ICC ODI Super League (same as the Ireland series)... which has instead been delayed indefinitely. 10 ODIs that would have been played since the last time a Blackcaps bowler rolled the arm over for their country... all gone.

So that much is pandemic related but even before the pandemic we had a dearth of ODIs. Btw, this next bit is mostly borrowed from our email newsletter last Friday so defs sign up for that if you’re about this chatter.

The World Cup final happened on 14 July 2019. After that the Blackcaps had Test/T20 series in Sri Lanka and at home to England followed by three Tests in Australia (try not to recall that one) and then India came for five T20s and it wasn’t until that was done that we finally played another ODI. 5 February 2020... adding up 207 days in between ODIs after the World Cup. We then swept India before losing an eerie game in Aussie with an empty stadium and then you know what happened next. By the time the first ODI against Bangladesh begins (our belated first ODI Super League game) it will have been 609 days since the World Cup final and we’d have played four One Day Internationals in that time.

How, for the love of all that’s holy, does it happen that one of the world’s very top ODI teams hardly ever gets to play ODIs any more? Are T20s really that much more lucrative that we need a 12-3 disparity this summer? What’s going on here? Ah well it wouldn’t be a kiwi summer without some weirdness about the cricket schedule.

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