Plunket Shield makes comeback

NZPA ©

The Plunket Shield has been dusted off and will reappear on the domestic cricket calendar for the first time in 35 years.

New Zealand Cricket (NZC) has decided to award the shield to the winners of the national four-day competition this summer.

And it wants to make the arrangement permanent, with chief executive Justin Vaughan saying the naming rights for the four-day competition were no longer for sale.

The competition is without a sponsor this summer, leading NZC to look to its past.

The shield was a constant on the domestic landscape from 1906 until it was last competed for in 1975-75 before commercialism took over and sponsors' names were attached to the domestic competition.

The shield is currently held at the NZC Museum at the Basin Reserve in Wellington.

"The reintroduction of the Plunket Shield allows us to acknowledge the traditions of the game and at the same time appropriately celebrate and promote our four-day first-class competition," Vaughan said today.

"For the first time in a decade we find ourselves in a different sponsorship environment -- and this gives us the opportunity to restore real history and heritage back into our first-class competition through the Plunket Shield."

Vaughan said NZC was committed to retaining the shield for the four-day first-class competition into the future.

"The naming rights for this competition are not for sale."

The last captain to win the shield was Glenn Turner, who led Otago to victory during the 1974-75 season.

He said it was wonderful to have the shield back in circulation.

"The Plunket Shield was our only first-class competition at that time," Turner said.

"There was no one-day game, and just five rounds of three-day matches, so the competition was intense. the Shield was a real symbol of interprovincial rivalry.

"The four-day game remains the pinnacle of our domestic cricket, so it will be great to see it back as the focus of the competition."

The shield season starts next week, and the six major association sides play five rounds before Christmas, then another five in February and March.