HOME BOUND: Jesse Ryder is scheduled to make his return to first-class cricket at his former home ground.

Black Caps batsman Jesse Ryder will return to cricket next week and is hoping to break into the New Zealand team by the time the West Indies tour gets under way in just over a month.

Ryder, whose six-month suspension for taking a banned stimulant ended yesterday, recently parted ways with long-time province Wellington to link up with Otago in Dunedin.

The Plunket Shield begins in a week with the Volts heading north to take on the Firebirds in the capital and Ryder is hoping the match will mark his return to the sport.

The 29-year-old hasn't played since late March when he was hospitalised after an early-morning altercation outside a bar in Christchurch.

He was left with a severe concussion and a lung injury before his subsequent doping ban further extended his time on the sidelines.

Ryder said he was finally back to full fitness and didn't believe the injuries sustained in March would have impaired his sporting abilities.

After admitting to gaining weight during his convalescence, he has been going to the gym twice a day, six times a week and expected to start the new cricket season in potentially the best shape of his career.

"The body's pretty good," Ryder said.

"I'm still suffering a little with the head, you know - just some light-headedness. But that's slowly getting better. "I've been training hard and everything's coming along really well."

While Ryder insisted his first priority was to perform well for the Volts, his long-term goal this summer was to regain his place in the New Zealand team.

In February last year, he was dumped from the team for breaching protocol by drinking after a one-day international while injured.

Not long after, he made himself unavailable for the Black Caps and hasn't played for the team since.

"My main goal is to push for the Black Caps again," Ryder said. "All going well, I'd like to push for the West Indies tour.

"But, definitely, the main aim is to try and earn a callup in time for that Indian tour [in January] if they don't pick me for the West Indies tour.

"That's definitely my main goal."

Ryder said his time away from the game allowed him to fall in love with it again.

After last year's decision to take a sabbatical, Ryder said he almost decided to quit cricket.

"The time I took off last year to do boxing and that sort of thing, I just didn't have cricket on my mind at all," he said.

"I was over it. I didn't even know if I was going to play again.

"Doing the boxing and all of that, it was awesome and took my mind away from the whole thing.

"Last year, I struggled a little bit, you know, even to enjoy it.

"It was a tough season. But that's why I probably needed a change. I needed to get my love for the game back and I need to try and rebuild my career."

As for his suspension for inadvertently ingesting banned stimulants 1-Phenylbutan-2-amine and alpha-diethyl- benzeethanamine when he took a weight loss supplement, Ryder said he wanted to put the past behind him.

He failed a drug test in March five days after taking a product called Gaspari Detonate and was told of the adverse finding not long after leaving Christchurch Hospital to recover at home in Wellington.

All of Ryder's attempts to check whether the product contained any banned substances came up negative and a potential two-year ban was reduced to six months when the Sports Tribunal of New Zealand ruled he hadn't been trying to enhance his performance.

"I'm not going to bother with supplements anymore," Ryder said. "They are a waste of time and I definitely don't want to ever go through that again.

"With my case, once the facts came to light and the Sports Tribunal put their statement out, the whole thing just died out.

"It died pretty quickly once people saw the statement and absorbed the actual facts.

"The vibe I got at that point was that everyone was more interested in me in terms of when I was going to get back to cricket and moving down here (Dunedin).

"I'm sure there will be people out there who think I'm a drugs cheat. But, hey, you've always got your haters and people are always going to come hard at you. But I'm used to that by now."