Can City Colts assert themselves early in the 2022-23 season with a win in this Friday night's Bonnor Cup qualifier against Bathurst City?

The club are bringing in a relatively unchanged team into this upcoming Bonnor Cup and Bathurst Orange Inter District Cricket season and they hope that their core group can bring their best to the table.

The likes of Henry Shoemark, Josh Toole, Aaron Seymour and Russ Gardner are all capable of delivering some of the sweetest shots in Bathurst and Orange when they're seeing the ball well.

They'll all have to be on the ball early in a new-look Bonnor Cup competition this season, where only two teams out of themselves, Redbacks and ORC will qualify for the main competition.

Colts and Redbacks each missed an opportunity for valuable match time when Saturday's opening round of the BOIDC competition was washed out.

Colts' BOIDC captain Gardner said that the preparation has obviously not been ideal with the wet weather of late but he's got faith that his side can make a positive start.

"To be honest, we've had a couple of training runs as a team but nowhere near what we should have. We'd be rusty, I'd think. We'll have to wait and see when we get out there," he said.

"The Twenty20 is good because it allows people to play more attacking cricket and provide some exposure for the youngsters coming through as well.

"It's great to see that there's more teams coming into the comp and it should benefit us to get some more match practice in. Hopefully the team will work its way well through the season.

"In this format a couple of players can win you the game. Every team is dangerous in these shorter formats."

Colts managed to put some performances together at the right time of last season's BOIDC campaign to not only reach the finals but also stun Orange City in the semis.

Ultimately, a slow start cost the team a chance of a higher finish on the ladder, but Gardner hopes the team can bring more of the cricket they showed across the back half of the 2021-22 season into this Friday's game.

"We had a slow start to the competition and there were games in the first half of the season that we could have won, but we didn't," he said.

"That hurt us a little bit but it was great to see the momentum that we got in the second half of the year which took us into finals.

"There's still a lot we can improve on. It's just a matter of being consistent week in and week out."

Dave Henderson will captain Colts for their Bonnor Cup campaign.

The match gets underway this Friday night from 6.30pm.

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