Continued rainfall in the region has meant that the start of the Wagga Cricket season next weekend is likely not to go ahead

Teams were supposed to take the field next Saturday for the start of the competition, however another influx of rain this week has meant that a start to the season looks unlikely.

Cricket NSW Southern & Western area manager Luke Olsen, who is also a Cricket Wagga board member, said that although while an official decision hasn't yet been made, it was looking likely that the start of the season would be delayed.

"First and second grade is definitely looking unlikely to start next weekend," Olsen said.

"We've got a meeting with the clubs tonight, so we will give them an update on where we are at and get some ideas on what they want to do."

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The season was scheduled to start with Twenty20 matches with Olsen saying that they could utilise some different options to help catch up on the missed fixtures.

"We've got some options through the season to catch up on some of these T20 games," he said.

"It's probably a bonus to a degree that they are T20 games and we may do Friday night games or some Sunday afternoon games.

"So there are ways we can actually pick up these games throughout the season, but we are working as hard as we can to get grounds prepared and ready to go."

Another issue has been the preparation of the grounds, with Olsen confirming that the curators haven't been able to start work on the grounds with wet weather stagnating any progress they try to make.

"They can't get out there," he said.

"Council normally do our initial preparation, so renovation for the year.

"But they can't get any equipment out there, they've been scarified and there has been a little bit of work done on them all.

"It's enough to at least get them ready to be top dressed and some soil put on them.

"But every time we try to get soil out there it rains and it just becomes too wet to get equipment out on the ground.

"So we are even struggling to get it started."

Of the major grounds that have turf wickets, Olsen said that there are a couple that are in better conditions than others.

"Our major cricket grounds in Robertson Oval, the cricket ground and McPherson are probably the three that are most likely to get games on them initially," he said.

"They're the ones that are in as good as condition as we can hope, obviously they need a top dress and we need to be able to get a roller out to them.

"But as far as doing the work we need to do to get them ready to go, they are the closest ones.

"Harris Park is fairly wet, Rawlings Park is really wet and Lawson Oval is probably the worst one at the moment.

"We have still got a few grounds that are a lot closer than others and best case scenario we try and have those grounds available.

"Maybe we play double headers on those grounds in first and second grade to try and get some rounds out of the way."

While the start of the senior competitions is set to be delayed Olsen was still hopeful that the start of the junior season would be able to get underway.

"We're still looking to start the juniors on time," he said.

"That will be the week of the 22^nd, so we are still looking at getting them going and hopefully this is the back end of the real bad wet weather and we can get underway on the synthetic grounds."

With registrations open for all levels of cricket including Cricket Blast and junior and senior competitions, Olsen was hopeful that it wouldn't be too long before all of the respective seasons could get underway.

"We are open for business," he said.

"We have just got to get a break in the weather so we can get out there."

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