New Zealand: Fewer teams on Priest's wishlist (28 October 1998)

28 October 1998

New Zealand: Fewer teams on Priest's wishlist

The Christchurch Press

If we are trying to prepare players better for the hard grind at first-class and international level then we have to have harder games at club level. - Mark Priest

Fewer teams and improved pitches is stalwart Mark Priest's recipe for a better Christchurch senior club cricket competition.

Priest, a 20-season veteran of club cricket in Christchurch for St Albans, believes the number of first-grade sides should be slashed to six to help lift the standard.

Concern about the deteriorating standard of club cricket in the province has been expressed in recent seasons as fewer representative players appear, and was a factor in prompting the Adams report last year.

Thirty-seven-year-old Priest - the oldest first-class player in New Zealand - is old enough to recall the days when two-day senior cricket matches were more fiercely contested than today.

"If we are trying to prepare players better for the hard grind at first-class and international level then we have to have harder games at club level."

Priest supports a change in the allocation of points with more emphasis on gaining the first innings advantage than outrights.

"There's nothing wrong with one team batting all day for 300 or so and the other team trying to get them the following week.

"But you do need good pitches for that and the bowlers then have to work for their wickets. The wickets in Christchurch are a bit up and down and help the bowlers too much.

"But there are few batsmen out there who are probably good enough to bat for long periods of time."

Priest believes most senior sides have four or five good players while the rest are making up the numbers.

"If we just had six teams then we would get the best cricketers, but of course that would mean some clubs merging and some empires being broken.

"The clubs with differing strengths and weaknesses should amalgamate."

Priest said he noted a change in the game when Marist entered the senior arena in the mid-1980s. With its declarations it turned the two-day games into virtually two one-day matches.

"Nowadays, not necessarily the best team wins the competition. Look at Lancaster Park a couple of seasons ago."

Priest mused that Canterbury may be in for a cricket drought soon because it does not have the quality of players coming through.

He said in earlier days there was less cricket played, meaning the family men tended to stay in the game longer at a higher level.

In Sydney grade matches are usually played on a one-innings-a-day basis.

When New Zealand coach Steve Rixon arrived in Christchurch two seasons ago to watch some of the Black Caps at club level he had difficulty identifying where the senior matches were and remarked they looked the equivalent of third grade in Australia.

Canterbury Cricket's executive director Tony Murdoch said he felt criticism of this season's competition was premature.

He said he had looked back 10 to 15 years ago and found low scoring as prevalent in matches then as it is today.

Murdoch said that rain had interfered with the early rounds of matches this season and slow outfields contributing to low scoring.

Legislating clubs out of senior status or forcing mergers could be their death knell which was not good for the game, Murdoch said.

He said sweeping generalisations should not be made.

Murdoch said the role of the senior club competition needed to be examined closely in the context of Canterbury cricket.

"The Adams report provided a lot of indicators to the direction we should be heading."

Source :: The Christchurch Press (https://www.press.co.nz/)