2026 Annual Players' Conference

The annual NZCPA Players’ Conference, held on 13 and 14 April, brought together player representatives from all environments to reflect upon and discuss matters relevant to their experiences within the high performance environments throughout the county. These discussions are critical to provide CPA information that will ensure players contribute to and help shape the future of these environments within our game.

With representatives from domestic and international men’s and women’s teams in attendance, the conference remains a key part of ensuring the player views sit at the centre of the New Zealand professional cricket environment.

The two day gathering facilitated open discussion, shared experiences and collaboration on key issues impacting players. The conference also played an important role in analysing the results of the player survey alongside feedback from end of season team meetings, with an intention to align key issues for players ahead of the negotiation of the next master agreement.

As in previous years, the workshop style format encouraged honest conversation, reflection and shared learning across the various groups of members (Blackcaps, White Ferns and Major Associations), with players reflecting on both their own environments and the broader national and international landscape.

Central to the conference were a number of key focus areas:

Key Conference Discussion areas

• Review and discuss the key areas from the annual NZCPA Player Survey, analysing trends across domestic and international team environments.

• Evaluation of current team high performance environments, including what is working well and where improvements are needed.

• Areas important to players for the next Master Agreement.

• World Cricketers’ Association and the escalating impact of global leagues on the traditional structure of cricket and international schedules.

Rosemary Mair highlighted the importance of these interactive conversations within the wider membership and relished the opportunity to share and learn from one another.

“It’s always good connecting with people from other Major Associations. You can relate on things that aren’t going so well but also what your MA is really strong at and what you can keep growing. The whole point of this players conference is to make our environments better at home and really help the players be better cricketers.”

The format of the conference encourages collaboration, with players sharing insights on their environments and presenting ideas back to the wider group. The group sessions provided valuable opportunities to align thoughts on key issues and identify practical steps to improve the professional cricket experience across the country.

A significant focus of the conference was to discuss the challenges players face given the changing demand for players globally and how this impacts our members in New Zealand and what are key priorities to seek to address in future.

Players identified areas of interest around the direction of the game, emanating from the emergence of private leagues and lack of clear scheduling windows for international cricket to remain relevant to fans. With increasing demand for the game’s best players presenting myriad of opportunities across the world, these discussions reinforced the importance  and need for flexibility and advancement to our contracting structures to ensure cricket retains strong throughout New Zealand.

WCA CEO Tom Moffat updated players on their current work and the growth of player representation across 17 of the top 20 cricketing nations, which highlights the importance of strong player representation and collaboration at both a domestic and global level through the respective player associations members. The issues impacting the international game were highlighted with an overview of the recent WCA published reports.  

Ish Sodhi spoke to the value of bringing players together and the impact of hearing different perspectives across the game.

“I think it’s really good to have a range of different players and perspectives in the room. You might not think about something from your own environment, but you can take learnings from other associations and implement change. It’s actually great to be all together in one place.”

The importance of NZ20 to players was further highlighted as essential to the domestic game, with players reinforcing their commitment to establishing the new league that will lift the prospects for the future of domestic cricket in New Zealand.

Overall, the 2026 Players’ Conference once again demonstrated the strength of the players aligning together, with a view to making the cricket environment better for all. .