NDCricket: Development Programme Delivers

Hamilton, New Zealand

With last week's announcement of New Zealand Cricket’s BLACKCAPS and New Zealand A squads there came a pat on the back for NDCricket’s Cricket Operations Manager, Pat Malcon.

Of the 34 names announced, 10 either play for NDCricket’s Northern Knights or have been through the NDCricket development programme.

Trent Boult (currently injured), Scott Styris, James Marshall, Bruce Martin and Graeme Aldridge have also all played for the BLACKCAPS or NZ A in the last six months, so the number could have reached 15 of the 34 selected players.

Malcon, who has overseen all of these players' careers, is the unsung hero of NDCricket. Having been in his role for 12 years, he has personal knowledge of every one of these players.

BLACKCAPS captain Daniel Vettori is one who benefited from Malcon’s development expertise. Vettori has a great deal of respect for Malcon: “You only need to know Pat to know he has exceptional intuition and knowledge of cricket. So many of us have benefited from one-on-one sessions with him and often it is a chat over coffee rather than in the nets.”

With the success of NDCricket's development programme, it is not a surprise that other associations' first class cricketers learnt their trade at NDCricket. Matthew Bell and Ewen Thompson have been recent BLACKCAPS, plus Neal Parlane and Amadeep Singh came through NDCricket programmes.