‘When you go to World Cups, you want experience,’ says head coach Gary Stead after Kiwis name provisional 15-man squad.
Captain Kane Williamson will play his sixth Twenty20 World Cup championship in June as New Zealand named an experienced 15-man squad with veteran pacer Tim Southee as another inclusion.
The tournament, taking place in the United States and the West Indies from June 2 to 30, will be Williamson’s fourth as captain and Southee’s seventh as a player.
Southee, 35, has taken a record 157 T20 international wickets and spearheads the attack alongside seasoned pace bowler Trent Boult, 34, who will be playing his fifth T20 World Cup.
Seam bowler Matt Henry and batting all-rounder Rachin Ravindra, voted the emerging cricketer of 2023, are the only players in the squad who have not played in a T20 World Cup before.
“When you go to World Cups, you want experience,” said New Zealand head coach Gary Stead.
“It’s an exciting squad with lots of options for Kane and I to consider in terms of balance, pitches and surfaces.”
New Zealand will hunt for a maiden title after reaching the semifinals of the last three tournaments and the final in 2021.
“We expect the venues in the West Indies to offer quite varied conditions and feel we’ve selected a squad with the scope to adapt to those conditions,” Stead said.
Seamers Adam Milne and Kyle Jamieson were ruled out by injury.
Our squad for the @t20worldcup in the West Indies and USA in June 🏏
MORE | https://t.co/a8cLkEjSDH #T20WorldCup pic.twitter.com/OUwHjEdaPn
— BLACKCAPS (@BLACKCAPS) April 29, 2024
Henry edged out Ben Sears for the vacant seam bowling berth in an attack that also features Trent Boult and Lockie Ferguson.
“Matt has worked exceptionally hard on his skills across the phases of a T20 game to come back into selection consideration,” coach Stead said.
“Rachin has made every post a winner in the past 12 months and it was exciting to see him continue that trajectory over the summer in the T20 format against Australia.”
Thirteen members of the 15-man squad have had recent experience in the Caribbean, featuring on the last tour of the West Indies in 2022.
New Zealand squad for T20 World Cup: Kane Williamson (captain), Finn Allen, Trent Boult, Michael Bracewell, Mark Chapman, Devon Conway, Lockie Ferguson, Matt Henry, Daryl Mitchell, Jimmy Neesham, Glenn Phillips, Rachin Ravindra, Mitchell Santner, Ish Sodhi, Tim Southee
