Pre-season warm-ups for the six first-class associations and the end-of-year match programme for the New Zealand Academy which were due to start next week have been cancelled.

New Zealand's cricketers came off contract to New Zealand Cricket (NZC) yesterday and have said in a united voice that they are not available for the preparation programme at the High Performance Centre at Lincoln University.

Six days of cricket had been made available for the associations, allowing them to take advantage of the generally settled spring conditions in Canterbury while also having some meaningful match play.

Last year the programme was beneficial in having all-rounder Chris Cairns gain some valuable build-up work before he returned to play on the New Zealand tour of Australia while the injured Daniel Vettori also used the end-of-year programme at the HPC to get himself back into fitness.

Central Districts, Wellington and Northern Districts were the first in line for the programme which was scheduled to start on Sunday at Lincoln University.

Otago, Auckland and Canterbury were to start their programme on October 20.

The games were once again to have been part of Cairns' rehabilitation from more knee surgery after he broke down on the first day of the first Test against England while there was the added factor in former All Black Jeff Wilson using these games as part of his build-up to playing first-class cricket again.

NZC chief executive Martin Snedden, who is in Colombo for an International Cricket Council meeting at the moment said the players' association had informed NZC that until a new contract was in place they were not prepared to attend.

The next meetings between the two sides are scheduled for next week.

Snedden commented: "There are some difficult issues involved in the negotiation process but I am confident both parties can work to reach a resolution."

The spokesman for the Players' Association, Heath Mills had no comment on the negotiations and said it would be inappropriate to discuss them. He had no comment on whether there was any chance the warm-up programme at the HPC could be resurrected if an early agreement was reached.

© CricInfo