Willow against leather begins

Wanganui club cricket begins in earnest for the 2013-14 season this weekend. PHOTO/FILE

The changing face of Wanganui club cricket which pads up this weekend is designed to provide a more even playing field.

More T20 games are scheduled and will be competed for by Premier 1 and Premier 2 teams as a separate competition.

Just four team - Saracens, United, Tech 1 and Marist - will compete in the Premier 1 grade, with the Collegiate 1st X1 absent from the grade during the early part of the season. Collegiate has a busy inter-school programme and is likely to join the Premier 1 competition early in the New Year.

The Tech 1 side is a newcomer after attempting to join the competition in the middle of last season. The team was denied that option, however, because it was deemed to be mid-season.

Wanganui Cricket Council of Clubs chairman, Neil Kirkwood said the philosophy behind adding more T20 matches to the programme was is to expose players against opponents they would not normally have played against before. The T20 games will be played only when the Wanganui representative team is on away duty reducing the Premier 1 ranks on those weekends. "The idea that a Premier 1 team will be too strong for a college team is probably correct, but it does allow for clubs to make connections with school players and look to encourage them to come to their club," Kirkwood said.

"The Premier 1 teams are weakened by not having rep players in it and it may allow a Premier 2 player to put in a performance of note against a side that is deemed far stronger than what he may have played against before. This only makes that player want to strive to play at a higher level.

"This positive should out-weigh the fact that some sides may get well beaten. The other positives to this, are that there are three tiers of competition here at the end. All teams will play a (T20) semi-final on the last weekend and be in contention for winning one of the grades. This offsets the idea that some sides will not be able to compete against others, when in fact the big picture is that they will be qualifying for a position for the finals' day," Kirkwood said.

The T20 competition has only affected the holiday round.

"Some teams feel the Premier 2 competition has become too much of a sameness, so this has been designed to breathe new life into cricket. This has, in fact, increased the amount of games we play in a season [weather permitting] so Premier 2 teams will only play a similar number of games in the regular season.

"I have also had complaints that teams travelling afar will only get a short game, do these teams not travel this distance for an even shorter game of rugby?"

"Those travelling teams have also had their distances thought about in the draw, so will be playing some teams that are close by."