Last season's Plunket Shield and One-Day champions Northern Knights gathered in Whangarei for a spring camp to prepare for a bumper 2010-2011 domestic season.
The squad had a full day of training at Cobham Oval yesterday and today they will play a one-day match there against Northern Districts A followed bya Twenty20 game tomorrow.
Last year the A side was very competitive and Knights' coach Grant Bradburn said he expected a similar performance from the group of players looking to step up to ND's top side.
"The A-side is strong and has around 15 players who are on the fringe of making the Knights.
"This is a good opportunity for these players to prove themselves, and next week we will play the academy side - who are slightly younger again but still a very strong side," he said.
Northern Districts are very keen to promote their next tier of players to play first class cricket, Bradburn said.
"Northern Districts produces so many Black Caps and the more Black Caps we have the more Knights we need as the Black Caps are absent for a lot of the season ... it also keeps our guys on their toes."
Today's match, starting at noon, is all about practicing the one-day format the coach explained, while tomorrow they will focus on the T20 format.
The HRV Twenty20 Cup was the only major title from three the Knights did not win last season, but they will be making a strong bid for it this summer.
Northern Knights have signed South African opening batsman Herschelle Gibbs and Australian players Brad Hodge and David Warner to strengthen their T20 campaign, which gets under way on December 2 against the Central Stags at Seddon Park in Hamilton. Meanwhile, Bay of Plenty skipper Jono Boult was the only major resident addition to the successful Northern Districts squad, earning a fulltime contract after some handy outings as a fill-in during first-class games last season. Next Wednesday, the Knights squad will face the ND Academy side in a practice two day match at Mount Maunganui's Blake Park.
