The Central Stags return to their McLean Park fortress from 10.30am tomorrow for an all-important, penultimate Plunket Shield match of the season – expecting a strong challenge from perennial rivals Northern Districts.

A well-controlled innings victory in the previous week’s round-six match against the struggling Otago Volts at the same venue delivered the maximum 20 points to the Central Stags, the defending first-class champions reclaiming the overall Plunket Shield lead from the Auckland Aces who meanwhile were confined to a low-points draw in a runfest with ND in Whangarei.

Stags captain Greg Hay is anything but complacent, however. With two rounds to go in his first summer as the first-class captain, he cites a tight leaderboard and the considerable pool of talent within the ND squad, named earlier today, that includes recent Blackcaps Mitchell Santner, Ish Sodhi, Tim Seifert, Scott Kuggeleijn and Daryl Mitchell as well as the experience of Dean Brownlie, who returns from an injury niggle, and Daniel Flynn.

Meanwhile, chasers Canterbury and the Aces are two sides capable to making a strong business-end tilt for the coveted title. With a maximum of 40 points left in the season for each team, just 13 points separate the Stags (83), the Aces (71) and resurgent Canterbury (70), who are coming off back-to-back outright wins. Northern Districts is holding fourth position on 52 points - which will only serve to make them hungrier to deliver winning performances back to back, in order to keep their more remote hopes alive.

History says the Stags have not been defeated at McLean Park since February 2016, but Northern Districts was the last visiting team to win against them at that venue, by 284 runs. Hay is also mindful of last summer’s final-round encounter against the same opponents, a tough match that was played across the road at Nelson Park and which produced a dramatic, action-packed first innings for both teams - before a gutsy, second-innings fightback with the bat, led by Will Young, saw the Stags eventually complete their championship season unbeaten.

The Stags have expanded their squad to 13 for round seven, allrounder Bevan Small coming in for Ben Wheeler and Dean Foxcroft added, the young Hawke’s Bay allrounder coming off a successful raid on the Hawke Cup for Hawke’s Bay followed by a solid batting performance for CD A against ND A at Nelson Park.

First drop Young has meanwhile been bracketed with top order batsman and CD A skipper Ben Smith. Young will rejoin the team if and when he is released from the Blackcaps’ Test squad in Wellington, where he is again on standby as batting cover for the second Test against Bangladesh.

Young, Hay and George Worker are all coming off centuries in the last match, while Blair Tickner fell just short of claiming his second first-class career five-wicket bag. Consistent, aggressive Dane Cleaver’s 83 meanwhile propelled him into second slot on the country’s list of leading run-makers this season, the wicketkeeper-batsman’s 489 runs from nine innings at an average of 61.12 including a century and five half centuries this summer.

Cleaver, who has now also taken made more than 100 catches and stumpings for the team as either a wicketkeeper or fieldsman, sits behind runaway leader and Wellington Firebird Devon Conway (646 runs from 10 innings at 107.66) and is just ahead of the influential opening batsman Hay, in third spot nationally with 475 runs from nine innings at 52.77.

Following the final home game at McLean Park, both the Stags and ND will travel to Hamilton for a rematch at Seddon Park - scene of the Stags’ Burger King Super Smash Grand Final win earlier this summer - for the last and decisive first-class domestic match of 2018/19.

All matches are live-scored at www.nzc.nz.

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