![Goldfield Ashes organisers are hopeful the rain depression won't hit them for a six this weekend. Picture: Scott Radford-Chisholm Goldfield Ashes organisers are hopeful the rain depression won't hit them for a six this weekend. Picture: Scott Radford-Chisholm](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/88uitQDCBZnXA8enwGJ5Zd/ba8181dd-8936-4695-a209-ab543cb9b6b6.jpg/r0_105_3945_2323_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Rain might have brought the New Year's Day test between Australia and South Africa to a miserable draw but the organisers of the renowned Goldfield Ashes cricket tournament in Charters Towers are hopeful that it won't be the same result for them this weekend.
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Charters Towers Cricket Association spokesperson Kerri Forno said it was too early to make a call, and at that stage all but three of the 229 teams nominated were still attending.
"In all my years of experience we haven't made a call on the weather until the day after the Ashes started," she said. "Only one was called off after day one, thanks to a big fall that night."
She said the weather was the only thing they couldn't control.
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"What I can say is that if the competition were to be held tomorrow, with the amount of rain falling tonight, we would lose fields to play on, but there are provisions in the rules to reduce from 35 overs to a 20/20 competition if we lose fields."
Team nominations are back to pre-COVID levels, a number of them from new groups forming breakaway teams, and includes 23 women's teams, well up from the high of 15 previously nominating.
Ms Forno joked that the girls didn't want the boys to have all the fun, but said it was likely that the women were coming anyway and decided they may as well play.
It's bringing a scheduling dilemma in that either wives or husbands are needed in camp to supervise children.
Around 60 fields have been prepared for the big weekend, including at the Eventide Nursing Home and 16 pitches at the Charters Towers airport.
"We couldn't have this amount of teams without a lot of community backing and the full support of the council," Ms Forno said.
Now all she needs is for the association's president to work out a way to get from flood-struck Mackay to Charters Towers in time for the start of the biggest amateur cricket tournament in the southern hemisphere.
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