A group of budding wicketkeepers recently gathered at Cobham Oval to improve their skills behind the stumps from leading New Zealand Cricket coach Jason Mills.
Mills is one of the country's top coaches on wicketkeeping and was invited to Whangarei to lead two coaching clinics last week, which were a great
success Northland Crickets' operations manager Graham Barlow said.
"We are lacking a bit of depth in the junior ranks - especially in the 12 to 14 year area - and we were a bit worried about that," he said.
"There is very little back up for the age-group so we are trying to develop and cover that."
One initiative was to call on the first class cricket coach Mills who instructed around 18 juniors at Wednesday's coaching clinic, followed by nine senior players in a second clinic.
The clinics were well timed with senior club cricket starting on October 3 with the Twenty20 competition, while junior A and B-grade cricket gets under way from October 17 at various clubs.
A-grade will most likely be played at Tikipunga on Saturdays, while B-grade, which now has three divisions, will be played at Kensington Park on Saturdays.
Northland Cricket's junior framework has had some changes this year - Have A Go for 5-7 year-olds on Fridays, starting October 16 and Kiwi Cricket - for 8-10 year-olds which starts on Wednesday October 14, will be now be based at Cobham Oval.
Each club has a contracted overseas professional cricketer joining their ranks during the next few weeks.
These players will play for these clubs in the premier grade, as well as helping out with coaching the junior cricketers.
"We are aiming to introduce a skills component and get our pros involved which is why we wanted to centralise it all at Cobham Oval," Barlow said.
After a successful junior cricket registration day where healthy numbers turned out to sign-on last week, the upcoming season is looking good.
