Here at World Cricket Badger, we are introducing a Team of the Week feature where we look in depth into a state, county or franchise. We will be working our way around the globe. This week we move to New Zealand’s North Island to catch up with the Northern Districts ahead of the 2013/14 summer.
New head coach James Pamment is targeting an assault on silverware in all three competitions as Northern Districts step up their preparations for the new domestic season in New Zealand.
Pamment has been promoted into the top job at Seddon Park, Hamilton following the departure of Grant Bradburn, who stepped down in April. This is the former assistant’s first head coach’s job after a career coaching at a number of levels in cricket and soccer.
The Knights finished last summer third in the four-day Plunket Shield, they were knocked out in the Minor Preliminary final of the one-day Ford Trophy and narrowly missed out on reaching the HRV Cup Twenty20 final despite having won their first three of ten matches with overseas duo Steven Croft and James Foster in their side.
They will have to contend with a whole host of international call-ups in 2013/14, but English-born Pamment insists a first trophy since their Plunket Shield success of 2011/12 is realistic.
“Oh definitely,” the affable Pamment told World Cricket Badger. “We go into this season with the aim of winning all three competitions. We will have some challenges around recruitment and finances because of what’s gone on in previous years.
“We’re not going to be as pro-active in the market as we have been. We’ll be putting our faith in the young guys that we’ve got and trying to create an environment that allows them to have some fun and success.
“We haven’t got the finances to secure James or Steven this year, which is a shame. They both wanted to come back, but financially it’s just not possible.
“I see it as our responsibility to develop as many of our players as we can. There’s no finance for winning our one-day and four-day competitions, but the Twenty20’s a little bit different. We have, over the years, heavily invested in marquee players such Hodge, Gibbs, Dilshan and Hussey, but we’ve never won it.
“Last year we had Steven and James, who were great as I said, but we finished fourth. We are going to have a crack this year with our own boys and our resident T20 expert, Scott Styris.
“It was a disappointing year last year, and that probably culminated in our coach resigning. That was maybe on the back of not achieving what we should have done with the group of players we had.
“But we fully anticipate being in the running for all three competitions we play in this coming summer.”
ND start their summer with a four-day clash against last season’s strugglers Auckland at Seddon Park on October 31. Before then, they complete their pre-season programme with warm-up matches against Wellington on October 21 and 22 at Blake Park, Mt Maunganui.
They will be led by new captain Daniel Flynn, who replaces Brad Wilson.
Photo credit: The photograph on the main page has been kindly provided by James Pamment.
We will have more from Seddon Park throughout the rest of the week.
James Buttler
As the editor of World Cricket Badger he is intent on building the website to give quality coverage of the domestic game around the world.
He is also the presenter of the Cricket Badger Radio Show on Radio Yorkshire every Tuesday evening between 7-9pm UK time.
James was the full-time Media Manager at Yorkshire County Cricket Club between 2007 and 2010.
James is a published author, a writer/video contributor to many cricket publications and a complete cricket badger!
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