Cricket: ND lay groundwork to improve Kiwi showing in Champions League

Daniel Flynn. Photo / Jamie Troughton

Daniel Flynn is hoping solid preparation will have his Northern Districts team in top shape for their Champions League debut next week.

ND, in Bangalore until Monday preparing for the qualifying tournament to find the final two teams, are following Otago (twice), Central Districts and Auckland (twice) as New Zealand's representatives.

After poor early showings from the New Zealand teams, Auckland and Otago in the last two editions have made the group stage, but fell short of the semifinals.

Last year Otago lost their final group game against Rajasthan Royals when Australian veteran Brad Hodge ripped the game away from them.

ND had four camps in Mt Maunganui and several practice games last week.

They have been boosted by the arrival of three players from the New Zealand A tour to Britain -- batsman Daryl Mitchell, wicketkeeper BJ Watling and bowling allrounder Scott Kuggeleijn.

Add in legspinner Ish Sodhi and allrounder Anton Devcich, who played the early part of that tour but have had a few days' break to prepare, and test regulars Kane Williamson, Tim Southee and Trent Boult, and canny veteran Scott Styris, and ND should be a competitive outfit.

They'd have been even more so had allrounder Corey Anderson been available to them, instead of turning out against them for his Indian Premier League side the Mumbai Indians.

ND play Sri Lankan team Southern Express next Saturday night (NZT), followed by the Lahore Lions and Mumbai.

This is not a time to get clever and strategise to give the best chance of making the top two.

"You go out and try to win every game," former international lefthander Flynn said.

"We're not going to target one team over the others. We're just looking to go out, play some good cricket and hopefully if we do that we can progress to the main draw."

Southern Express have a sprinkling of lower level Sri Lankan internationals, including handy seamer Farveez Maharoof.

Lahore has regular internationals Umar Akmal, Wahab Riaz, Ahmed Shehzaad, Nasir Jamshed and are captained by offspinning top order batsman Mohammad Hafeez.

Mumbai's numbers include high profile players Lasith Malinga, Harhajan Singh, Keiron Pollard, Pragyan Ojha, Rohit Sharma, Mike Hussey and Anderson.

Flynn's view is simply that means it'll be a good chance to knock over a quality side.

"We'll sit down next week and have a really good scouting meeting on the teams. some of the guys have played a bit of cricket against them so they should have some good stuff to share."

• Former ND and New Zealand coach Andy Moles has been named coach of Afghanistan, who will play in next season's World Cup.

Northern Districts
Squad for the Champions League:
Daniel Flynn (c), Anton Devcich, Kane Williamson, Daryl Mitchell, Daniel Harris, Brad Wilson, Scott Styris, BJ Watling, Mitchell Santner, Tim Southee, Scott Kuggeleijn, Jono Boult, Ish Sodhi, Graeme Aldridge, Trent Boult.