Naper's McLean Park is being put to the test this summer

Progress is being made at McLean Park. Photo / Paul Taylor

Premier Hawke's Bay sports arena McLean Park is expected to come in out of the international cold with an announcement today that its oval still under reconstruction will be used for test match cricket in the summer.

While lips were mainly sealed last night a summer internationals announcement today from New Zealand Cricket is likely to include a five-day test, possibly day-night and marking 40 years since the park's first test cricket match in February 1979.

The Napier City Council has been discussing possibilities with NZC but mayor Bill Dalton and chief executive officer Wayne Jack played the straight bat, neither confirming nor denying. Dalton said any announcement on tour schedules was a matter for the national cricket body.

This year it was reported McLean Park was being considered as the venue for a day-night five-days test match between New Zealand and England in March.

While tightlipped, Dalton said he is "delighted" with the way discussions have been going with NZC as the park nears readiness in a multimillion-dollar drainage replacement and returfing sparked by the abandonment of a plum-choice Chappell Hadlee Trophy transtasman one-day match without a ball being bowled, amid the failure of an ageing drainage system in February last year.

Another match a month later, between New Zealand and South Africa, was transferred and the rest of a March 2016 commitment to five internationals over the next two summers was scrapped.

It's not just cricket that is beckoning for the park, which is expected to be back in use for Hawke's Bay Magpies national championship rugby from the first weekend of September.
Dalton said he's also "excited" by negotiations aimed at bringing other major events to the park, about which he expects announcements will be made in the near future.

Jack said the oval reconstruction, which started in the second week of April and includes excavating to a depth of 45cm, replacing the drainage system filling with special-purpose sand and laying a new hybrid turf, is "62 per cent" complete.

Heavy rain early last month did little to hamper the project, Dalton saying that while he had been out of town at the time he'd heard the rain drained from the park in minutes once the rain stopped.

The laying of turf by Australian specialists, who have resurfaced such major stadiums as the Melbourne Cricket Ground and Wellington's Westpac stadium, is expected to start within three weeks and be complete in early August.