Queensland Premier Cricket will provide a chance for some New South Wales players to gain valuable match time this weekend while confirmation is awaited over when their domestic season will start amid the ongoing Covid-19 restrictions.
A number of New South Wales names had been playing in the NT Strike League in Darwin during July and August and opted to travel into Queensland after the tournament rather than back to their locked down home state.
Matthew Gilkes (Northern Suburbs), Jason Sangha (Valley) and Jack Edwards (Redlands), who all ended last season in the New South Wales Sheffield Shield team, have found temporary teams as has Chris Tremain who joined the Blues from Victoria last season but did not make an appearance.
Currently there are only two Sheffield Shield and Marsh Cup matches on the schedule involving South Australia, West Australia, Tasmania and Queensland with the initial fixture list having to be ripped up due to travel restrictions.
New South Wales and Victoria are still trying to find a state where they can quarantine then prepare to play with South Australia understood to be the likely location with an aim of starting their season in late October.
Although New South Wales is likely to hit key vaccination targets next month - and Victoria a short while later - travel in and out of the states is likely to remain restricted.
There had been hope of playing six rounds of Sheffield Shield before the Big Bash starts in early December but that now looks unlikely which will have a knock-on effect on Australia's Ashes preparations.
The aim is still to run the BBL as the intended home-and-away schedule although there may need to be amendments to that. The first two weeks of the WBBL, which starts on October, have been moved entirely to Tasmania. Players, staff and officials from Victoria and New South Wales arrived on Friday to begin their two weeks quarantine.