When the CENTRAL STAGS step onto Palmerston North's Fitzherbert Park in their whites and baggy greens this November - ready to play the first red-ball match of the summer, two significant numbers will immediately go up on the board.

The first is 75.

The 2025/26 season is CD's 75th jubilee summer and, fittingly, the Stags start their Plunket Shield campaign at the very same ground where their cricketing forebears played the first ever CD home match – against Canterbury in January 1951 in the 1950/51 Plunket Shield.

Back then, Fitzherbert Park was known simply as "The Sportsground". It's the name still plastered streetside in big, burgundy letters on the main grandstand.

Ajaz Patel bowls at Fitzherbert Park | MBUTCHER

Not only was it the first home match for the pioneering Stags (their sole previous game had been away at the Basin, a few weeks earlier), it was also their very first win: a whopping 144-run victory after bowling out the mighty Cantabs for just 98 in 49.2 overs in the last innings.

Outright points, with a day to spare, helped by Marlborough's FEN CRESSWELL taking eight for the match, including the team's first five-wicket bag. 

Given the literal decades of assiduous petitioning that it had taken to get the New Zealand Cricket Council to agree to the formation of CD and admittance of a Central Districts team to the eminent competition, there could have been few better days to have been a fly on the Stags' changing room wall - after defeating one of the associations that dominated cricket politics.

The Central Districts captain was Stags cap number one, JOE ONGLEY - later Sir Joseph Ongley, Supreme Court judge.

He had been one of the key people hammering away on the administrative front to bring CD into being, and into the Plunket Shield. Before him, his father Arthur had been trying for a couple of decades himself.

The second significant number that will tick over on the metaphorical tins in November is 100.

It's the 100th summer of the Plunket Shield championship, i.e., the 100th season of national first-class competition (excluding the years 1940 to 1945 when World War II meant no national competition was played).

 

So with all that history in the air, captain TOM BRUCE and his Stags will be doubly keen to etch their name on the history-soaked, ornate silver and wooden trophy at the end of this special season.

From those 1950/51 beginnings, the Stags have now played 527 first-class matches in the national championship. 

The team has fashioned a fine record in the modern era, and last won it just two years ago, with a sensational last push in Nelson - the first time they had 'done the double' with the one-day Ford Trophy, as well.

Today's players have a good understanding of the watershed days of their team's history and the unique brand that is CD Cricket.

IAN LEGGAT is Stags cap number eight. He was a youngster from Nelson in that 1950/51 Stags team, playing alongside his former Nelson College schoolmaster GRAHAM BOTTING. 

At 95, Leggat is still a first-class and Hawke Cup record-holder and still keeps his baggy green and blazer close. He is the living link to the Stags' first season, team, and match, and has met with the Stags of today to share precious memories and stories of the team's early years.

In the 1960s, VIC POLLARD became the first Stags captain to lift the Plunket Shield back-to-back, and Pollard has also connected with the team in recent years to share inspiration from earlier generations.

Pollard led the Stags to the coveted Plunket Shield title in 1966/67 and 1967/68 to take their tally of titles to three.

VIC POLLARD

By then CD had already won the Plunket Shield for the first time in the 1953/54 season - a mere four years after coming into existence.

Today the Stags have lifted the Plunket Shield a dozen times, and in 2022/23 GREG HAY joined Pollard as a captain to have succeeded twice, as well as becoming the Stags' most successful captain overall.

When Hay retired at the end of the following season, he signed off with one final match-winning century, in the Stags' 150th Plunket Shield match win overall. 

The new Plunket Shield season may see the return of some fan favourites. 

DOUG BRACEWELL owns one of the best all-round records in the country and is the only pace bowler among the three Central Stags (alongside retired spinners BRYAN YUILE and STU DUFF) to have scored more than 2,000 first-class runs and taken 200 first-class wickets for the team over a career. Bracewell and Duff have gone further, topping 3,000 runs.

Bracewell is now the current squad's longest-serving player, having debuted in November 2008, although he made no Plunket Shield appearances last season.

Classy DEAN FOXCROFT has also returned to the Stags' contracted player ranks after half a dozen seasons with Otago.

Both are Hawke's Bay representatives and Napier's McLean Park will host three of the eight four-dayers this season, including two key matches at the business end in March, against last season's runner-up the Wellington Firebirds and current champion, Northern Districts.

The Stags finished midtable in fourth last season, having made a good start, but with two pivotal draws ultimately restricting them to just three outrights for 2024/25.

 

PHOTOSPORT

Ironically, those two drawn matches arguably produced the most memorable performances of the summer.

Allrounder WILL CLARK achieved the rare feat of a maiden bag and a maiden century in the same first-class match in the draw against ND, away at Bay Oval.

TOM BRUCE, DANE CLEAVER and JOSH CLARKSON scored centuries in the same innings to produce the Stags' highest ever first-class total, 700/5 declared, away in Auckland - where Bruce reached 345 on his own, a score bettered in New Zealand cricket and Plunket Shield history by only one man: Otago's late great lefty, Bert Sutcliffe, and that was back in the 1950s.

PHOTOSPORT

Positive intent, dangerous players, and a raft of match-winning experience combine to make the Stags one of the most respected teams on the circuit, in a format that's regarded as the hardest to win.

The Central Stags are the only team to have lifted the pre-eminent trophy three times in the last decade. Another 32 days of first-class cricket await them this summer, and there will be no stones unturned in their quest to lift the Shield again, in a doubly significant summer.

Stay tuned for the Dream11 Super Smash men's and women's schedule

CENTRAL STAGS GAMES

All matches free admission from 10.30 a.m. 

ROUND 1 • 18-21 November 2025 • Fitzherbert Park, Palmerston North v Auckland Aces

ROUND 2 • 26-29 November 2025 • Cello Basin Reserve v Wellington Firebirds

ROUND 3 • 5-8 December 2025 • McLean Park, Napier v Canterbury

ROUND 4 • 13-16 December 2025 • University of Otago Oval, Dunedin v Otago Volts

- midseason interval -

ROUND 5 • 28 February-3 March 2026 • McLean Park, Napier v Wellington Firebirds

ROUND 6 • 9-12 March 2026 • McLean Park, Napier v Northern Districts

ROUND 7 • 18-21 March 2026 • Mainpower Oval, Rangiora v Canterbury

ROUND 8 • 27-30 March 2026 • Seddon Park, Hamilton v Northern Districts

• Toss at 10am day one | Free livestreams + livescores at cdcricket.co.nz

• Championship decided by the points table after 8 rounds

• Up to 20 points available per team per match, including first-innings points