There's still one more week until the Bathurst Orange Inter District Cricket season makes its return but in the meantime this Saturday will bring three crucial Twenty20 clashes.

The triple treat of games begins at 10am with Bathurst City facing Rugby Union, then City Colts take on St Pat's Old Boys in another all-Bathurst affair at 2pm.

Centrals and Cavaliers will round out the day with a game under lights from 6.30pm.

The Rugby-Redbacks game brings two teams together who have been dying for a fix of Twenty20 cricket this season.

Rain has done its best to interfere with the 2021-22 season at every opportunity but these two have felt its brunt the worst - Bathurst City with just a single T20 game to their name while Rugby are yet to take to the field.

Redbacks were especially disappointed to miss out on their second round Bonnor Cup game against Centrals given the way they'd dispatched of Lithgow Lightning in the opener.

"It really doesn't feel like we've started the season. It kind of feels like a couple of trial games, so fingers crossed that we can get some momentum going not just in our team but across all of cricket," Bathurst City Twenty20 skipper Mark Day said.

"It will be nice to start with a T20. We probably don't quite have our strongest team together, with players away with family commitments at this time of year, but I'd say other teams are in a similar boat.

"The great thing is that we get to see Brock Larance in action, from Dubbo. I'm really excited to see that. We unfortunately don't have Ben Patterson for this game.

"They're both outstanding cricketers and they'd both be two of the best cricketers in Western Zone. Even having just one of them on board is great.

"If we can start to get a consistent team out each week over this half of the season I feel that we've got the ability to give the [BOIDC] competition a shake-up."

Due to missing out on their opening two matches the next pair of Bonnor Cup games for Rugby Union are must-win affairs.

"We haven't played a single round of Bonnor Cup yet. I'm looking forward to this one, that's for sure," Rugby captain Ryan Peacock said.

"It's a great matchup. It should be an exciting game, fingers crossed, and hopefully more of our guys can fire than theirs. The important thing for us is that these last two games in Bonnor Cup are must-win games, so that adds a little bit of extra intensity to it."

Rugby will hope to use the T20 game as a springboard for a more consistent brand of cricket.

Prior to the Christmas break the club recorded wildly different results - thumping defending champions Orange City and then City Colts before falling apart against CYMS.

"On our day we're up there with the best sides in the competition but we didn't show that in our last game against CYMS. That was probably due to a lack of consistent cricket and players coming in and out, which are things that do upset the balance of a side," Peacock said.

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