SDCA president Justin Weller said plans are well underway for the first ball of the new season to be bowled on Saturday, October 9.

"From early reports, we are looking at having very similar amount of teams in both juniors and seniors as we had last season," Weller said.

At this stage, there are five clubs who have nominated for first grade - with the association hoping to push for two more before the start of the season.

"Ideally, we'd like to have seven or eight first grade sides to not only make the competition stronger across the board but also that's how many teams the three lower grades are running off," Weller said.

"That eight-team structure would be ideal to have across the board.

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"In saying that, we appreciate some clubs are in rebuilding phases at the moment and don't quite have the talent to field a first grade side.

"We are working with those clubs to get back the first grade competition to a level it needs to be, which is, in my eyes, a strong eight-team division, which hopefully can occur within the next two seasons."

While the COVID-19 situation might not have changed the start date for this season, discussions are underway for it to alter the formats played in 2021-22.

"Between COVID-19 and as a way to attract more players back to the sport, our committee is discussing running the SDCA as a one-day format across all four grades this season," Weller, whose competition will also play a Twenty20 format in 2021-22, said.

"As much as we would love to play two-day cricket, given the uncertainties around restrictions and lockdowns at the moment, we believe it's best we just run a one-day competition for this season.

"The plan then would be to return to both one and two-day formats next season."

In terms of the juniors, their season will also start on October 9 and run for 15 weeks.

Stage one and two will run with the same format as previous seasons, the committee pushing for six teams in both stage three divisions one and two, allowing them to play 10 one-dayers and five T20 fixtures.

"The lockdown has obviously had a massive impact on all South Coast sports but the SDCA wants everyone to not be scared and sign up with the expectations that the season will start as normal," Weller said.

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Due to this, all of SDCA's registrations will be done online this season, via here.

While the SDCA appears set to start on time, the Greater Illawarra Cricket Zone competitions, set to feature Weller's Creighton Cup side, Chris McCarron's under 18s outfit and their five junior teams, are in danger of starting on time - originally slated for September 25.

"Thankfully for most of our representative teams, the restrictions and lockdowns didn't interrupt our trials and training," Weller said.

"We picked our representative sides early and managed to be able to hold a few training sessions already - which could prove crucial as we will miss out on a few over the coming weeks with this lockdown.

"Hopefully the lockdown will be lifted soon and representative sides and clubs can get stuck into their training again.

"We are still awaiting final directions from Cricket NSW and NSW Health regarding what protocols and restrictions we will be playing under, which I assume will be similar to last season.

"But with everything changing day to day it is very hard to know what to expect and the association will do its best to keep all its players and staff as safe as possible this season."