Picture Credit: NZC
New Zealand all-rounder Jimmy Neesham owns the social media. He is active all the time on Twitter and doesn’t hesitate to comment on any topic. He is also known for his humorous replies to trolls. However, in a recent tweet, a Twitter user accused Neesham of skipping the national duty to play for money. Neesham was quick to react to it and gave a sensible reply explaining the reason for the same.
As the New Zealand board has named a second-string squad for the Pakistan tour and have rested their top players, a user from Pakistan seemed unhappy about it and shared a tweet regarding the same. “Shame on you. Skipped national duties for money,” wrote the user. To which Neesham replied sensibly, “I’m getting a lot of messages like this so I want to be crystal clear. It is an NZ Cricket player welfare policy that first-choice players aren’t on this tour. I made a request for an exemption but that request was denied.”
The New Zealand cricket board has named Tom Latham as the stand-in captain for their tour to Bangladesh and Pakistan and rested top players like Kane Williamson, Trent Boult, Kylie Jamieson, and Lockie Ferguson. Jimmy Neesham’s name was also missing from the squad. The reason given by the New Zealand chief executive David White was workload management for players ahead of a busy season. “The need to safeguard the wellbeing of our players and support staff is now very real, and we've endeavoured to do this by carefully managing their workloads over this winter's massive playing programme", White had said. However, some are linking the absence of these players with their participation in the second leg of IPL in the UAE which starts from September 19.
Pakistan announce their ODI squad
The Pakistan Cricket Board has also announced their squad for the three ODIs against the Blackcaps. Babar Azam will be leading the Men in Green. While most of the names are the same as was for the West Indies tour, few new names are also included. Mohammad Haris, Mohammad Wasim Jnr, Shahnawaz Dahani and Zahid Mahmood have received their maiden call-ups.