The Pink Report

Great Expectations

Here at last! The 2011/12 New Zealand cricket season is underway today with round one of the Plunket Shield. We’re in Whangarei, the Aces have come to play and the Yahoo!NZ Northern Knights are thoroughly amped and ready to rumble.

After the heartbreaking finish to last season (in with a shout for the defence of the Shield until the very last clash with the Wizards, but ultimately left with a bare trophy cabinet from all three comps), there’s a lot to set right in the coming months. But the early omens are good. James Marshall showed some great form in a highly competitive two-day warm-up match between the Knights and a Northern Districts A selection at Hamilton, scoring 183 at almost run-a-ball pace. Joey Yovich supported with a half-century, all the batters were looking positive and the seamers running in well, Brent Arnel and Trent Boult looking very good. That’s especially important with our regular frontman Graeme Aldridge missing from the attack this match, after his heartening recognition - at long last - for the Blackcaps. Well done on the tour to Zimbabwe and your ODI and T20 New Zealand caps, G.

You’ll no doubt have heard the guys had a preseason fitness camp to remember, too - heading to Rarotonga thanks to the local Edgewater Resort and the relationship between Northern Districts and Cook Islands Cricket. Busting a gut running up hills and so forth always seems that much nicer with palm trees.

Whether it will be quite so tropical in the winterless north today is debatable - showers and chilly breezes have been buzzing around overnight and this morning and I have a hunch it might turn into a jersey day. But it won’t dampen the enthusiasm or sense of excitement as Brad Wilson leads the team out of the hutch at Cobham as their official new captain.

Again, I’m sure you will have heard already that the team is innovating this season by introducing a different skipper of each of the three formats - Brad for the Plunket, the irrepressible Scott Styris for the HRV Cup (great choice, I reckon - it will only fan the flames of his contagious uber-competitiveness!) and the seasoned experience of Marshy comes in for the Ford Trophy (which is the new name for our one-day comp).

Brad thinks it will be stimulating for everyone having a regular change of command in the dressing room - most of all for the captains themselves.

“I think it gives each captain a little bit more chance to prepare for the particular format of the game (especially with the Ford Trophy matches interspersed in the first-class and Twenty20 schedules). When you’ve got less on your shoulders, it gives you a chance to put a bit more energy into your ‘department’, if you like. And it’s something new that will be interesting for us all,” says Brad.

It helps that it hasn’t come as a complete bombshell, either. “It was something we’d talked about and deliberated quite a bit last season actually, and it was something Beagle (coach Grant Bradburn) and I had discussed during my season review. So no, it didn’t come as a big shock when the decision was made. I had a bit of an idea it was happening, and I had had plenty of time to think about it and prepare and plan. Looking back, it was great for me to have had a little taste of the captaincy last season, filling in for the odd game here and there - I didn’t feel lumbered with the responsibility for the whole season and so I kind of eased into it, which was a good way to get an introduction to what it’s like.”

Brad’s style is calm, inclusive and laidback, trusting his players to do what they were selected to do. “If everyone’s going well, then my job should be fairly easy. That’s how you want it to be. In the field, the bowlers are the ones delivering the ball and I think that they be the judge of what plan is going to be the best one. I see their input as important and myself and the senior guys as being there for them to bounce ideas off - and hopefully, together, we come up with the right strategy.”

Brad spent three months of the off-season playing in the Netherlands, at the same club in The Hague that Anton Devcich played for the previous season. “They’ve had quite a lot of Kiwis there in the past - from Chris Pringle to Gareth Hopkins and  Grant Elliot, so New Zealand has quite a strong connection to their club. It was great to experience a different culture - and they definitely play cricket a little differently from how we do.”

Although there are more grass wickets in Holland now than there were 15 years ago, many clubs still play their gung-ho one-dayers on coconut matting pitches, with variable bounce that makes cutting the ball a fair challenge.

Once home in New Zealand, like his fellow Knights Brad muscled into preseason training, with training groups brought together in Whangarei, Hamilton and Mount Maunganui.

Brad: “It’s felt like a fresh start with a few new faces coming in, and that’s been a good thing. We’ve got Corey Anderson and Brandon Hiini - they’ve both come up from Christchurch to join the squad, and some young guys coming through from our own region like Mitchell Santner, who’s been selected for the 12 for this game. He’s an exciting young left-arm spinner who did very well for the A’s last season.”

So with the big day finally here, captain proper for the first time, is he sparked up with a few little nerves? Nope, he says plainly. And silly me, I should have guessed as much - because that’s totally Brad’s even-tempered style.

“I wouldn’t say we’re nervous, just excited and ready to crack on into it now,” he adds. “We’ve had quite a long period where we’ve been training and everyone’s just itching to get into it. There’s always a little bit of extra anticipation at the beginning of a season, but I reckon we’re in good stead for game one and in this competition anyone can beat anyone, so we’re not too worried about who we’re playing first up or anything like that. We’re just focussing on putting our own game together - and if we do what we know we can do well, we’ll be good enough to beat anyone.”