New Zealand have included leg-spinner Ish Sodhi in their 15-member squad for their upcoming tour to Pakistan for the two-match Test series.
\nThe 30-year-old has been included alongside Glenn Phillips and uncapped Blair Tickner for the series which is scheduled to start in Karachi on December 26 and conclude in Multan on January 3.
\n\u201cI know all three of the guys have a real passion for the longest form of the game and are looking forward to getting into their red-ball work at the pre-tour camp in Lincoln this week,\u201d said New Zealand Coach Gary Stead on the trio\u2019s inclusion in the squad.
\nOn Sodhi\u2019s inclusion, the Blackcaps coach said that they have included Sodhi after looking at the current conditions and style of play in the Pakistan and England Test series.
\nThe tour will be Tim Southee\u2019s first as Test captain after Kane Williamson announced he was stepping down as skipper in the longest format.
\nMeanwhile, Trent Boult has been excluded from the squad after he made himself unavailable for the tour. Kyle Jamieson has also not been included in the squad as he is recovering from a back injury.
\nThe New Zealand coach said his team was looking forward to the prospect of playing Test cricket in Pakistan for the first time since 2003.
\nThe squad for the one-day series will be named on December 19.
\nBlackcaps Test squad for Pakistan
\nTim Southee (c), Michael Bracewell, Tom Blundell (wk), Devon Conway, Matt Henry, Tom Latham, Daryl Mitchell, Henry Nicholls, Ajaz Patel, Glenn Phillips, Ish Sodhi, Blair Tickner, Neil Wagner, Kane Williamson, Will Young
\n\u00a0
\nSchedule
\nFirst Test: December 26-30 at National Bank Cricket Arena Karachi
\nSecond Test: January 3-7 at Multan Cricket Stadium
\nFirst ODI: January 10 at National Bank Cricket Arena Karachi
\nSecond ODI: January 12 at National Bank Cricket Arena Karachi
\nThird ODI: January 14 at National Bank Cricket Arena Karachi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Zealand have included leg-spinner Ish Sodhi in their 15-member squad for their upcoming tour to Pakistan for the two-match Test series. The 30-year-old has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3671,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}