Tara Murray
Gisborne and District Cricket Association matches are unlikely to go ahead this weekend, with a final call to be made later in the week.
Senior men’s competitions are yet to get underway with the first four rounds cancelled due to heavy rain and water logged grounds.
All rounds have been one-dayers, with another round of one-dayers scheduled for this weekend.
One women’s round has gone ahead along with one round of weekday junior cricket.
GDCA competitions manager Rob McIntyre admits things don’t look great for this weekend.
“Of the 55 grounds the association uses across the six local government areas, 19 are currently unplayable due to water not draining from the surfaces, grounds damaged from a wet football season and councils being unable to topdress them and grounds that are scheduled for council maintenance/renovation works that can not be started as the grounds are too soft for the equipment,” he said.
“The weather for this week will not assist in drying out these grounds and it looks highly unlikely that matches will be played this weekend.
“We will wait until the end of the week to make that call.”
McIntyre said at this stage there were no plans to change fixtures or rescheduled matches for the rounds lost so far.
He said this may change with a further loss of rounds in the coming weeks with forecasts for this current pattern of wet weather to last until the end of November.
McIntyre also said they wouldn’t be moving matches if grounds were unavailable due to the nature of the situation.
“Many of the matches fixtured for the next month will be affected by the availability of grounds,” he said.
“With so many grounds out of action, there is no scope to move matches to other venues and these matches will simply have to be abandoned.”
Victorian Turf Cricket Association president Zoran Havranek said last week that he didn’t think there would be play for two to three weeks in that competition with multiple grounds unplayable.
