Wellington, like all of New Zealand's cricket associations, were waiting for news from today's board meeting of New Zealand Cricket in order to get on with planning the next season's initiatives for the game.

While the news of who would be appointed the coach of the national side was the most obvious decision to be made, Wellington chief executive Ervin McSweeney was also looking for some finality on the domestic programmes for next summer and some news following up on the reviews undertaken last summer on cricket at the grass root levels of the game.

"We're keen to know what the board thinks about the work the staff of New Zealand Cricket have been doing and whether anything will come from them.

"They are a big thing for the grass roots of the game," he said.

Wellington has been planning its next season to try and build on the success of their Firebirds side last summer with the aim of keeping the standard and quality of play in the association's senior side as high as possible.

"We are also keen to try and re-invigorate the performance of our women's team.

"We've spent quite a bit of time on women's cricket and want to strengthen the whole area of participation," McSweeney said.

He said it was too early to see if the introduction of development officers in the region had made any impact on redressing the declining numbers of players across the secondary school spectrum.

"A lot of work has been done by the development officers, but it is still too recent to be able to see a trend.

"We want to try and get the numbers to where participation levels are up and we can reverse the trend.

"We have to get the bottom of the pyramid safe first, and while I don't really like to see top teams not making progress we have to look two or three years out," he said.

Some changes have also been made to the structure of club cricket in the capital. Two main options for change were promoted last season, one was to have district cricket, the other was to have a four-tiered division model with promotion and relegation between grades.

The preferred option by clubs was for the four tiers. And while clubs may not have two teams in one grade over time they could field teams in each grade.

"That provides some encouragement for clubs to find strength throughout their club," he said.

There will be eight teams in each section, and Stokes Valley and Eastern Suburbs had teams promoted to make up the numbers in the Hazlett Trophy Senior Two section next season.

© CricInfo