Australian cricket captain Ricky Ponting says he will be concerned if the 2006-07 playing schedule includes his side being squeezed into a one-day tournament in New Zealand mid-way through the Ashes series.
With the itinerary for next summer's keenly-awaited Test series against England yet to be finalised, Ponting said he would be concerned if his side had to again switch from Test to one-day mode in December.
Last year's inaugural Chappell-Hadlee one-day series against New Zealand and this year's series have both been played in December.
"Yes, I would be concerned then, yeah," Ponting said, ahead of the first one-day match against the Black Caps, at Auckland's Eden Park.
This year's Chappell-Hadlee series has been crammed in between Australia's Test series win over the West Indies and the upcoming series against South Africa, which starts in Perth on December 16.
"Ideally it would have been nice to have played all our Test cricket in one bunch and played this tournament when we are playing one-day cricket," Ponting said.
"But that's part and parcel of being a professional cricketer these days, you've got to take yourself from Test cricket to one-day cricket in a very short space of time.
"We've worked hard on our one-day skills over the last couple of days and there'll be no excuses as far as we're concerned that we should be able to perform those tomorrow."
Next summer's five Ashes Tests are expected to be played in Brisbane in November, Adelaide and Perth in the first half of December before the traditional Boxing Day (Melbourne) and January 2 (Sydney) matches.