The country's top cricketers have reacted badly to a potential cut to the Plunket Shield competition for the 2018-19 season, says Players' Association boss Heath Mills.

Plans to review domestic cricket and potentially halve the Plunket Shield competition have gone down badly with players and escalated tension ahead of pay talks.

New Zealand Cricket chief executive David White said a week ago the 2018-19 domestic competition was up for review and didn't rule out the prospect of Plunket Shield being cut from 10 rounds to five.

Reaction from current and former players was overwhelmingly negative, as NZC and the Players' Association prepare to begin negotiations in coming months for a new master agreement.

GETTY IMAGES New Zealand Cricket chief executive David White says the "right mix" of domestic cricket is being discussed which could include cutting Plunket Shield back from two full rounds next year.

The current one expires in July and talks are expected to be robust, with the recent high drama and extended standoff in Australia providing a backdrop. New Zealand's players look certain to follow suit, and seek a fixed percentage of NZC's annual revenue. Currently, players don't have certainty around their payment pool while grassroots cricket has ring-fenced funding, and the six major associations are also propped up by annual grants from the national body.

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KAI SCHWOERER/GETTY IMAGES Former Otago allrounder Sam Wells, now a board member on the Players' Association, questioned NZ Cricket's move to cut back on Plunket Shield while expanding their commercial team.

"We're still hopeful that's it's a positive, constructive process. But when players hear the competitions are going to be cut, it raises the antenna as to how the negotiations are going to go," Players' Association chief executive Heath Mills said.

"The players believe very strongly in the domestic competitions and their value to New Zealand Cricket."

Saving money would be one NZC justification for reducing the Plunket Shield, which spans 40 days with travel and accommodation costs for the three visiting teams. Domestic cricket costs NZC up to $5 million a season, and the Twenty20 Super Smash is the increasing focal point. In last year's annual report NZC declared revenue of $52.5 million, but an overall loss of $2.16 million.

Former Otago allrounder Sam Wells, now on the Players' Association board, summed up the frustration. "NZC wants to reduce investment in the Plunket Shield citing cost yet their commercial team expands exponentially. Interesting priorities," Wells wrote on Twitter in response to last week's story.

Clearly, the players will want full disclosure of NZC's revenue and where it's going when discussions get under way. Any moves to reduce first-class cricket, as NZC becomes more and more a corporate entity with a rapidly expanding staff of 70-plus fulltime employees, will escalate tension between the sides.

Said Mills: "My view is we ought not to be cutting cricket programmes for the sake of it, and we need to ask ourselves why they're being cut, when we know that NZ Cricket's revenue has increased significantly over the last 4-5 years.

"We don't mind having a conversation about the structure of domestic cricket but it is absolutely the heartbeat of our high performance programme. We think it is very important and we would like to ask questions about where the spending priority is? Domestic competitions are costing no more than they did five years ago."

This season's schedule will be status quo - as per the existing master agreement - but long form cricket is under increasing scrutiny. The players believe two full rounds of Plunket Shield provide comfortably the best grounding for young players - for both tests or Twenty20 cricket around the world - even though it seems shield form isn't always compelling form for the national selectors.

"It's the heart and soul of our high performance programme; the bedrock of cricket in New Zealand," Mills said of the venerable first-class competition.

If anything, he hopes the high performance programme with 111 current contracted players can eventually expand.

White has previously expressed confidence NZC and the Players Association will find common ground in their talks, as they've done in recent years when signing off variations in the master agreement.

But he said Plunket Shield would inevitably be under the microscope with test cricket under pressure to become profitable and meaningful. The International Cricket Council will soon rubber stamp a test championship starting in 2019 which is backed by the Players' Association and means eight tests per year with every match carrying competition points.

"If we've got in a four-year period of two World T20s and a 50-over World Cup and two test match competitions, what is the right mix of cricket domestically to ensure we're competitive at international level? That is something we're absolutely looking at right now," White said.

Asked if that meant halving Plunket Shield to one full round of five matches, White responded: "Maybe. Also more A cricket [an imminent NZA tour to India is soon to be announced]. Is there some more cricket that can bridge the gap from first-class to international cricket a little bit more? They're all the kinds of things we're discussing."

Those discussions are about to get interesting, lengthy and potentially feisty.