Lance Hamilton: "I was blown away getting offered the role and it was an extremely proud moment." Photo / Warren Buckland
Lance Hamilton: "I was blown away getting offered the role and it was an extremely proud moment." Photo / Warren Buckland
New Central Districts cricket chief executive Lance Hamilton has spent more than a quarter of a century with the organisation since he first represented the Central Stags as a fast bowler in 1996/97.
"I moved here from South Auckland looking for cricketing opportunities in 1996 and to have them stillpresenting themselves now, 26 years on, is pretty cool."
"I was blown away getting offered the role and it was an extremely proud moment."
Hamilton has replaced Pete de Wet, who left to lead Triathlon New Zealand and is the first former Central Districts player to lead the organisation since Blair Furlong.
"I've worked for all five of the previous CEOs. Blair was the one that first appointed me to be manager of the Stags back in 2010. It's been a good grounding.
"Pete was really inclusive around his leadership style so I got to understand [many areas of the business]. It's a big challenge."
Incoming CEO Lance Hamilton has praised former CEO Pete de Wet's inclusive management style. Photo / NZME
Hamilton represented the Stags until 2006/07 and was called up by the Black Caps for two one-day internationals against Australia in 2005, including one at McLean Park.
After retiring from playing, he became the team's manager and assistant coach, as well as serving as commercial manager for the organisation.
He was appointed head of high performance in 2017, where he oversaw the Central Stags, Central Hinds and the representative pathway for Central Districts.
With his appointment to the top job, it's a role he will look to fill as soon as possible.
"Part of our high-performance strategy is to develop players for the Black Caps and the White Ferns.
"With Hannah Rowe and Rosemary Mair getting White Ferns contracts recently, the push for us is to try and grow the base of talent in the female game like we've been doing for the men's game for quite some time."
Central Districts is comprised of eight District Associations: Hawke's Bay, Manawatū, Taranaki, Wairarapa, Horowhenua-Kāpiti, Whanganui, Marlborough and Nelson.
It presents a unique challenge for the most widely spread Major Association in New Zealand cricket.
Hamilton is well aware what an important role all of them play.
"I'm a massive supporter of theirs and the role that they play in helping us develop our own players and bringing players through the system.
"I saw it as a player and in the roles I've been in over the years how important the districts are to us in our sustainability. I'll be reconnecting with them and getting a sense for where they are all at.
"It's a vast area with eight different regions that are all operating at different levels as well. It's about getting an understanding on how I can help them."
Exciting projects continue to progress at Mitre 10 Park in Hastings.
The Cricket and Boxing Centre which commenced construction earlier this year is estimated to be finished in mid-September.
It will house four indoor cricket lanes and will be supported by changing and office facilities, shared by the boxing area.
"The Central Stags and our identified players will use it through the middle of the day and then it will be a community based facility in the mornings and in the evenings for schools and clubs.
"There will be an online booking system where you pre-pay and you can book the whole facility or just book one lane. For the region, having a dedicated cricket training facility will be awesome."
A project waiting for final council consent is a cricket greenhouse, also being built at Mitre 10 Park. Currently, there are only two other facilities of this nature in the country, in Lincoln and Tauranga.
It will be an all-weather facility with 16 grass wickets, to be used for high-performance players. It will be 65m long and 20m wide, have a retractable domed roof, and sides which can be rolled up.
There will be a movable net system inside on a pulley. Once consent is granted, there's a two-month build for the greenhouse structure followed by a further two and a half to three months for the grass wickets to bed down.
"On a nice winter's day we could be training on grass with the roof open and the sides up, but on a colder, wet day, you'd have it all locked down, with the bottom rolled up slightly to get the air circulating, so you can be in there training on grass all year round," Hamilton says.
New, impressive facilities like these are key to Central Districts' desire to engage with the cricketing community as well as bringing through the next generations of representative players.
"The big thing for us is our push around trying to be sustainable, not only financially, but also developing our own players from within.
"These facilities give us a great opportunity to continue to do that."
