With less than 10 days before the ICC Men’s ODI World Cup, the New Zealand Skipper Kane Williamson will be playing in the Warmup matches before the big tournament.
Williamson set to play Warm up games ahead of World Cup
The New Zealand team has recently completed their three-match ODI series against Bangladesh with the victory in the third ODI match.
The New Zealand cricketer Kane Williamson has been out of action since March. the return of the player after his ACL injury in his right knee. But he travelled with the side to England in a bid to keep working on his fitness.
He has a total of 6554 ODI runs with 13 centuries with an average of 47.83 due to which he gets the fifth position in the list of all-time run scorers for New Zealand in ODI format. Before the team left New Zealand, Kane Williamson said that playing the Warmup games will get the best out of him as much as possible.
“It’s working through those warm-up games to get as much out of it as I can, personally and as a team, without sort of bothering too much,” Williamson said. “There is a strong desire to basically be involved in those as much as I can; we’ve got two of them before our first competition game.
“And basically it’s just wanting to progress [with] what I am doing now – the running, the fielding, and also time in the middle with the bat.”
“Not so much the sprinting; more the slowing actually. From sprinting to braking, and a little bit of change of direction. But it’s all been part of the plan, introducing it towards the end of the recovery.
“Having said that, there’s still obviously time to go with the overall part of it, and keep trying to bank on good days because the rule’s pretty much helpful in terms of just moving forward with it.”
“The load is going to keep increasing, so there is a little bit of an unknown. But it has felt pretty good really in the last few weeks.
“I’m hoping it continues to feel like that. But we’re definitely looking to touch on more stuff, [and] introducing myself into the game mode, which is something which we haven’t had the opportunity to do.”
“We will definitely consider some of that. Where I field is usually at mid-off, which will probably remain the case. Probably slightly better suited to it than the square of the wicket. Potentially some slip, but I won’t be standing there if we don’t require one.”
The Blackcaps will be facing Pakistan on September 29 at Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Hyderabad, and South Africa on October 2 at Greenfield International Stadium in the warmup games before the World Cup 2023.
