THEY won't have a premiership to defend, but Lisa Griffith promises she and her New South Wales Breakers will have passion, confidence and drive come the 2020-21 Women's National Cricket League.
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The Breakers are the most successful outfit in the history of the competition, having won 20 of the 24 grand finals contested.
Heading into last summer Griffith and her team-mates were aiming for a fourth consecutive crown and while making the decider, the Bathurst all-rounder's side lost to Western Australia.
But Griffith, who also got to skipper the Breakers five times last season, feels the Breakers have learned from that experience.
"To be honest last season we probably didn't expect to make that final, we had a really young group and I guess inexperienced," she said.
"But I think that passion's always been there, that's the way the Breakers play our cricket, we've always strived to play great cricket.
"If anything it has kind of spurred us on to think 'We can do it, we can be in that final, we can make that final and we can win it.' Even though we didn't expect to make it last season, we were still hungry to win it."
While there had been talk that the upcoming WNCL season would be cut as part of Cricket Australia budget measures, Griffith believes the competition will not be impacted.
Griffith said it is expected the season will commence in September and feature eight games plus finals. She hopes it will once again showcase the talent of Australia's female cricketers.
"As far as I know there will be no change to the WNCL season. We've made really big inroads in women's cricket since the WBBL, I think Cricket Australia and Cricket New South Wales have done a really good job with putting women on a platform," she said.
"Cricket Australia, along with the Australian Cricketers Association, have said 'Look we don't want to lose all this work that we've done, let's make sure we keep these competitions going and keep putting women's cricket on that stage'. That's really comforting news."
Griffith and her fellow Breakers resume training this week, a situation she described as "unreal."
While they will still have to adhere to social distancing guidelines in place due to the coronavirus, she admits her sport has been "super lucky in the grand scheme of things".
Griffith also feels lucky that at this stage Australian representatives should be available for the majority of the WNCL tournament.
That's not to say she does not have faith in the younger Breakers - in fact she feels they have already proven themselves.
"You look at those young girls, Phoebe Litchfield and Hayley Silver-Holmes and Stella Campbell, they're the players who are stepping up and doing the work for us," she said.
"It's is amazing that as a young group, they can hold the fort. With any games we play without the Aussie girls, we'll still be in really good stead.
"[But] I'm excited for the Australian girls to be involved because it really lifts the domestic competition. That is really important for us, especially us girls who aren't in that set up, it helps to really lift the standard across the board."