Is Queenstown making a bid to host part of next year's International Cricket Council Under-19 Cricket World Cup?
Yesterday, the Queenstown Lakes District Council released its agenda for this week's Community and Services Committee meeting, being held on Thursday - the only item being discussed behind closed doors relates to next year's event, being hosted in New Zealand between January 12 and February 4.
The international limited overs tournament will be the 12th edition of the Under-19 CWC; it will be the third time New Zealand has hosted it.
Ten full members of the International Cricket Council qualify automatically for the tournament. They include Australia, Bangladesh, England and South Africa.
Five other teams are still to be determined.
A field reconstruction of the Sir John Davies Oval at the Queenstown Events Centre was recently completed to bring the ground up to the international playing standard for next summer.
The council awarded the $640,000 contract to TIC Projects.
Work included having 90mm of sand over an extensive drainage system developed specifically for sports fields, making it more attractive to high-level sports teams and allowing increased use by the community.
The work came after the resort missed out when New Zealand Cricket released its home playing schedule for the 2016-17 and 2017-18 summers in June last year.
Three games were allocated to Dunedin's University Oval, but none was scheduled for the Queenstown Events Centre because its playing surface and drainage standards no longer met NZC's standards.
It hosted nine ODIs from 2003 to 2014 before falling out of favour with NZC.
Earlier this month, QLDC parks and reserves planning manager Stephen Quin told the Otago Daily Times there were already discussions about high-profile cricket returning to the ground but ''I can't make any announcements at this stage''.
The agenda for Thursday's meeting recommends the item is held with public excluded to ''protect information where the making available of the information would be likely unreasonably to prejudice the commercial position of the person who supplied or who is the subject of the information''.
