Big drawcard Mahela Jayawardene has arrived but has yet to pad up to make his Central Districts Stags debut because of flight complications and now inclement weather.
The Devon Hotel-sponsored CD side now have to bank on some divine intervention to make the top-three playoffs of the Georgie Pie SuperSmash Twenty20 competition.
"It's not ideal but it's part and parcel of what you get when you're relying on others' results to do you a favour," CD coach Heinrich Malan said last night after the Stags v Canterbury Kings game in New Plymouth was abandoned without a ball bowled in Saturday's televised match at Yarrow Stadium.
However, Malan said the Stags, who are perched on the fourth rung of the ladder under leaders Otago Volts and the weekend's movers and shakers Northern Districts Knights and Auckland Aces, still had four games to play so all captain Kruger van Wyk and his men could do was give it their best shot to clinch all four.
Doing the small things in meticulous detail "in this wonderful game we play" was imperative, especially with the resumption of the Ford Trophy campaign for the defending champions after the T20s, he said.
CD play ND in a televised match in Hamilton on Thursday from 7.10pm before rolling out the welcome mat at Pukekura Park in an untelevised affair on Sunday.
The Aces' one-run victory over the Volts at Eden Park and ND's seven-wicket trouncing of 2014 champions Wellington Firebirds Knights at the Basin Reserve in the capital has put the cat among the pigeons. The Volts sit on the top rung on 16 points from six games, two ahead of ND and the Aces, who have played a game fewer.
