Cricket: Back to Seddon park

Cricketers may be playing at Hamilton's Seddon Park this season after Westpac decided not to renew a 15-year naming rights agreement.

Seddon Park became Trustbank Park in 1990 -- a deal that caused outcry among fans -- then WestpacTrust and finally Westpac Park.

But it may revert to its original name now.

The bank will continue its involvement with the Hamilton rescue helicopter and the Waikato Business Excellence awards.

Sources close to the bank say the Seddon Park decision was a foregone conclusion after a series of blunders resulted from a $2.5 million upgrade in 2002.

The December 2002 cricket test against India finished early because of an unsuitable pitch, a one-dayer the following month which promised a capacity of 14,000 people could only hold 8400 people, and the grass on the pitch faded last year.

In March last year New Zealand Cricket took matches away from Hamilton, telling the council to replace the naike clay pitch with waikari clay. But then in January this year the new pitch was also a disgrace and the park lost the lucrative one-dayer against the Australians in March.

Meanwhile, the bank moved into other naming agreements elsewhere, including an indoor stadium in Christchurch and the new Westpac Stadium in Wellington.

Bank sources say the multimillion-dollar 10-year deal in Wellington has frustrated the Australian-owned bank because of the insistence on calling it the Cake Tin.

That was never the problem in Hamilton where the bank's involvement in the former Seddon Park was obvious even during the bad times.

- NZPA