New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum will skip tours of Zimbabwe and South Africa this year, but will return to the side and be available until at least next year’s World Twenty20 tournament in India, the country’s cricket governing body said yesterday.
The 33-year-old’s playing future has been the subject of intense scrutiny following New Zealand’s recently completed tour of England, with suggestions he could retire.
However, New Zealand Cricket (NZC) said that McCullum would stay with the team until after their home series against Australia next year, before leading them to India for the World Twenty20 in March.
He would miss the tours of Zimbabwe and South Africa in August to rest after an “intense period of cricket,” it added.
McCullum has been nursing a chronic back problem for the best part of five years and has often said he is unsure as to how much longer he can manage the injury before it forces him into retirement.
Local media had reported that he was contemplating calling it quits at the end of New Zealand’s international program at home next year.
The former wicketkeeper said he was looking forward to guiding the youthful side through the next year as the team continues to mature.
“It’s a critical time for the team,” McCullum said. “We’ve had a very good past 18 months, but we’ve got some real challenges ahead of us and we need to keep making progress. This is a young, emerging side with some very big series on the horizon and it’s a really exciting time to be involved.”
McCullum and coach Mike Hesson have led a turnaround in New Zealand’s cricket fortunes, with the team not having lost a Test series either home or away since 2013, while they advanced to their first one-day World Cup final in March.
His team and tactics were also praised by the British media on their recently completed tour for their attacking style of cricket, which some have said has helped stimulate interest in the game in England ahead of the Ashes series with Australia.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later
RSS