New Zealand head coach Gary Stead has hinted that he may break up his team to ease the workload across the upcoming tours this year after their ICC World Test Championship (WTC) victory.
New Zealand has had enjoyed success across the formats in the last 12 months and the coach was elated with the team’s success, but he believes the challenges the players to more success.
After winning the WTC title against India, Kane Williamson-led New Zealand team returned home and are currently serving out their two-week COVID-19 managed isolation in Auckland and Stead is using this time to plan how to use players during a busy schedule in the coming months.
As reported by Newshub, Stead said on Friday (June 2), “While we've had a pretty successful year and it's nice that we got the spoils in the end, but if you reflect across the whole season, over the last 12 months, it's been a very, very successful time across all formats, which is nice. It's also a time you can really challenge players to keep working on getting better.”
With the tours of Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and then the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021 lined up, the coach is mindful of not overloading his players.
Stead further added, “It's a really challenging time selection-wise and we're really conscious of the welfare of the players, being away from that period of time as well, and then include quarantine on top of that. It's fair to expect we will probably not see the same players attend right throughout the whole four tours and we're just working through what that might look like from a selection point of view right now.”
Crediting New Zealand’s success to the stability of the team, the head coach noted, “I think one of the reasons for our success over the last two years has been the stability of our group. There haven't been a lot of player changes or retirements, so it's been a pretty consistent team, while still introducing some new players in that time.”
He signed off, “Players like Kyle Jamieson, Devon Conway, Daryl Mitchell, and Will Young are guys that come to mind, who have proven they are good enough to be international players right now. That's exciting for the team and healthy for the group that here's some internal competition.”
(With Newshub Inputs)
