It's the start to the Finnish cricket season
Tony Munro - 1 May 2000

The 2000 Finnish cricket league season will start soon with the potential addition of four new teams. Finnish Cricket Association official, Andrew Armitage, previews the season ahead:

"Generally speaking, we have now finalised fixtures for the 2nd Official Finnish Cricket Association League Season which will be opened in Helsinki with the fixture between Stadi CC and Turku CC on May 13th.

The League will be spread over the summer and will climax with the final on September 9th. Presently we have not yet included any new clubs from last season in the Association, which means that the 4 existing teams of Stadi, Turku, Vantaa and Helsinki will compete for the trophy.

Fixtures will include a home and away tie against each of the other clubs. Plans are afoot however to assist with incorporation of new teams from Tampere, Vaasa and Oulu.....watch this space!!

Stadi CC is planning to maintain a second XI this year and has friendly fixtures arranged for each Saturday throughout the summer, excluding League weekends.

The "famous" annual Finnish Sixes tournament will be held on July 29th this year and will include teams from up-and-coming cities of Tampere and Oulu as well as a representative team from Estonia and a "pure-Finnish" squad. It promises to be a fine weekend yet again!!

The Finnish "National" squad is due to be selected early this month. It is also planned that as a warm-up for the ECC Festival in Austria later in August, there will be a cricket weekend against Estonia over 5/6 August.

Finally, as part of the ICC'S European Development Programme, we had the honour of hosting MCC umpire Brian Canniford over last weekend in Helsinki. A fantastic weekend was had by all the 20+ participants, helped no-end by the enthusiastic and highly knowledgeable presentation given by Brian.

This is certainly another great step in the right direction down the long road to improving the standard of the game in this part of the world, and I am sure it will pay great dividends in the form of quality umpiring during the coming season."

© 2000 CricInfo Ltd