Otago have begun their final preparations for next month's Champions League Twenty20 tournament.

The Volt, minus their New Zealand internationals who are on duty at the Champions Trophy in South Africa, have headed for Brisbane for warm-up matches against Queensland Academy and South Australia.

From there they will head to India on October 2 for further warm-up games against Indian Premier League winners the Deccan Chargers and English county side Somerset.

Otago's opening match of the 15-day NS$9million tournament is against South African side, Cape Cobras, on October 10. They play the Bangalore Royal Challengers two days later.

"I see the Cape Cobras have been confirmed the favourites and Bangalore are third at the moment, so we have a couple of big games in our pool," coach Mike Hesson said.

The 12 teams have been split into pools of three and after round-robin play the bottom team in each pool drops out with the remainder progressing to the final eight.

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The Volts, who qualified by winning New Zealand's domestic Twenty20 competition, are ranked outsiders.

"Hopefully, we do show that we have a lot more to offer than some think," Hesson told the Otago Daily Times.

Otago captain Craig Cumming believes his side have prepared well and he is not discouraged by the tough draw.

"If we can do everyone a favour by knocking one of those teams out, then when we go through to the next round it will only get easier for us."

Brendon and Nathan McCullum, Ian Butler, Neil Broom and English import Dimitri Mascarenhas will join the squad in India.

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