Northants chief executive David Smith has spoken of his concerns that the continued cold weather will ruin the start to the County Championship.
The County Ground found itself under a blanket of snow earlier this week, and with the 2013 season due to start on April 10, Smith is worried the weather could decimate the early-season programme.
The snow has now disappeared from Wantage Road, but the current big freeze is set to go on for a few more days yet.
Northants begin their season with an LV= Championship Division Two clash with Glamorgan in Cardiff in just 12 days’ time, and Smith told BBC Northampton: “The temperature at this time of year is a major concern and I believe it’s the wettest March on record.
“There are nine matches before the end of May and the competitiveness of the competition could be destroyed.”
The county cricket schedule was heavily affected by poor weather last year, as nine of Northants’ 16 County Championship matches were drawn, five of 12 matches in the Yorkshire Bank 40 ended as a ‘no result’ and two of their 10 matches in the FL t20 also fell victim to the rain.
Although the County start their County Championship campaign with that trip to Glamorgan, they host Essex from April 17.
“It’s going to be a bit of a blessing that we’re playing away from home for a lot of that period,” Smith continued.
“But we’ve started the season in the first week of April in the last two seasons. We used to start later in April when I was playing and that was cold enough.
“We need a week’s dry weather and we need some double figure temperatures, which we should get at this time of the year.
“We appear to be about three or four weeks behind where we should be in terms of temperatures.”
Northants’ players have just returned from a pre-season trip to Barbados which they part funded themselves - and Smith is happy that they went.
“They’ve had 10 or 11 good days out there, with the sun on their back and have been involved in some competitive cricket which they wouldn’t have got here,” he added.
“We have some friendlies lined up but I’ll be very surprised if we play next week.”