The Northern Spirit are heading into the State League looking to build on the intermittent success we have experienced in our previous two seasons of domestic cricket.

While we are still the relative newcomers in this competition, and I would suggest we are heading in with the youngest side, we are aiming to step up this year to being consistently competitive.

The side is a young one, with an average age of 19 and an oldest player of 22, but we have a core of players who have been there since our debut season in 1999/00 and we are not lacking in experience. I think if you looked around the other sides you would find many of the top performers fitting into our age bracket, so age really isn't an issue.

During our short history we have picked up some thoroughly enjoyable and well constructed victories, and we've been handed some comprehensive hidings.

Being in these situations has given us the necessary taste of both success and failure and we now know which we prefer.

While we have been making progress each year, we have been hamstrung by consistently failing to put together a good performance in all three disciplines on the one day. This is where we will endeavour to raise the bar this season.

Thirteen players have been selected by coach Cliff Dickeson for our first four matches. Genuine competition existed for places in this year's side and particularly heartening was the standard of young players pushing for selection.

These players are the result of ND's commitment to developing women's cricket through the age-group tournaments and the application of quality coaching resources to the women's game, no mean feat given the huge geographic area we cover.

The side features an experienced and well-balanced bowling line-up with Nicola Browne and Louise Milliken heading the pace attack. Medium-pacer Jenny Stafford and in-swinger Haylee Partridge have the ability to create pressure and spin bowling options, something we have lacked in the past, are provided by off-spinners Victoria Brown and Maree Hannay, and leg-spinner Kirsty Moore.

The responsibility at the top of the batting order will rest with myself, vice-captain Janice Fraser, Brown, Sarah Hutchins, and Auckland draft players Rosamund Kember and Anna Soma. The middle-order has performed well in the past and is unchanged this year with the return of wicket-keeper/batsman Katherine Spence from Auckland, Stafford and Hannay.

Our season begins in Hamilton this Saturday and Sunday against the State Otago Sparks, followed on Monday and Tuesday by the State Canterbury Magicians. Both will be coming into their fifth scheduled match, we will be playing our first. For those of us who didn't attend the national Under-21 tournament it will be our first cricket for up to six weeks. We will have to hit the ground running.

WestpacTrust Park, under the care of Doug Strachan and his team, will no doubt provide us with an excellent playing surface. Fingers crossed the rain that has featured in so much cricket this summer stays away.

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