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Kane Williamson will return to action for New Zealand in the three-match ODI series against England, which kicks off at Bay Oval, his home ground, on October 26. Williamson, 35, is missing from the ongoing T20I series as he is recovering from an unspecified, ‘minor medical issue’ in the past month.Williamson is among a group of players who have a casual contract with New Zealand Cricket (NZC). He had earlier made himself unavailable for the three-match T20I series against Australia and missed the Zimbabwe tour to play county cricket and the Hundred as part of his deal with Middlesex. More recently, Williamson was appointed Lucknow Super Giants’ (LSG) strategic advisor in the IPL.Allrounder Nathan Smith also returned to the New Zealand squad after undergoing rehab for an abdominal injury sustained during the first Test against Zimbabwe in August in Bulawayo. Smith, 27, has not played any competitive cricket since.Related

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New Zealand head coach Rob Walter welcomed Williamson and Smith back into the set-up. For Williamson, this will be his first appearance for New Zealand since the Champions Trophy final in Dubai in March earlier this year. Smith also played in that final, though as a last-minute replacement for Matt Henry, who was injured at the time.”Kane and Nathan have had to work hard to overcome their respective injuries and illness,” Walter said in a statement. “We all know what Kane means to the Blackcaps – to have his skill, experience and leadership back in the group is fantastic.”Nathan’s still relatively new to his international career, but he’s impressed with his all-round skills and ability in the field.”Having undergone rehab, Smith has declared himself fit and ready for the New Zealand summer.”Yeah, always exciting when you get the opportunity to play for New Zealand in any series,” Smith said. “The last period from that [Bulawayo] Test to now has looked like a bit of rest initially. And then after a couple of weeks, you can sort of start to get moving again and strengthen the ab back-ups. Since the start of September, I’ve been ripping into some rehab and building the bowling loads back up. It’s just been a really good period to get some strength in and build some training back up for a busy season.”Mitchell Santner also returned to take charge of the ODI team after leading them to the Champions Trophy final. Having recovered from an abdominal injury, he is currently in action in the T20I series against England.However, Finn Allen (foot), Lockie Ferguson (hamstring), Adam Milne (ankle), Will O’Rourke (back), Glenn Phillips (groin), and Ben Sears (hamstring) were all unavailable due to injury.Nathan Smith has recovered from an abdominal injury•AFP/Getty Images

Tom Latham will take the wicketkeeping gloves and will also make his first appearance for New Zealand since the Champions Trophy final. Latham had been sidelined from the two-match Test series in Zimbabwe with a shoulder injury. He hasn’t played any competitive cricket since his century for Birmingham Bears in the T20 Blast in July.Along with Smith, Canterbury seam-bowling allrounder Zak Foulkes has also been picked in the squad. Foulkes has played just two internationals so far and in September, he hit back-to-back fifties for New Zealand A in Benoni in the unofficial ODI series. Michael Bracewell and Rachin Ravindra are the other allrounders in the side.Henry, who is the highest wicket-taker among seamers in ODIs in 2025, with 24 strikes in nine innings at an average of 15.50, will lead the attack.This will be Walter’s first stint with the New Zealand ODI side as their head coach. “The ODI side has been very successful for a long period of time, as the current ICC ranking of number two suggests,” Walter said. “We have an experienced core of players and as a team, are very clear on how we want to play. This is very much the start of our journey to the ICC Cricket World Cup in South Africa in 2027 and I know the group are excited to get going in this series against a quality England side.”New Zealand’s ODI group will assemble in Tauranga on Friday ahead of Sunday’s opening game. The second ODI will be played in Hamilton on October 29, while England’s tour will conclude with the third ODI in Wellington on November 1.The ODI series will overlap with the men’s Ford Trophy, New Zealand’s premier domestic one-day tournament, which will start on October 25 across various venues. The Ford Trophy will kick off New Zealand’s domestic summer for a second year in a row. The Ford Trophy will start on October 25, followed by the women’s Hallyburton Johnstone Shield (HBJ) taking off on November 15.

New Zealand ODI squad

Mitchell Santner (capt), Michael Bracewell, Mark Chapman, Devon Conway, Jacob Duffy, Zak Foulkes, Matt Henry, Kyle Jamieson, Tom Latham (wk), Daryl Mitchell, Rachin Ravindra, Nathan Smith, Kane Williamson, Will Young

Shubman Gill has been appointed India’s new ODI captain, replacing Rohit Sharma, and will lead the side in the three-match series in Australia starting on October 19.Rohit has been picked in the ODI squad as a batter and, along with Virat Kohli, is set to represent India again for the first time since the 2025 Champions Trophy in March.The selection panel, headed by former India fast bowler Ajit Agarkar, met on Saturday in Ahmedabad, where India won the first Test of the series against West Indies by an innings and 140 runs. The reason behind the captaincy change was that the selectors wanted Gill to settle down well before the 2027 ODI World Cup in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia. It is understood the decision was taken collectively by Agarkar in coordination with India head coach Gautam Gambhir and BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia.Related

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“Obviously at some stage you got to start looking at where the next World Cup is,” Agarkar said at a press conference in Ahmedabad. “It’s [ODIs] also a format which is played the least now, so you don’t get that many games to actually give the next guy, or if there is going to be another guy, that much time to prepare himself or plan. We are two years away still, might look like a long time, but we don’t quite know how many one-day games we might play. Closer to the World Cup we might end up playing a little bit more than what we have, but the last one-day game we played was what, 8th or 9th March in Champions Trophy, and the next one we play is in October 19th, so it is a bit of a challenge with one-day cricket at the moment … It is very difficult to have three different captains for three formats, in terms of not just selectors but more importantly even for the coach, to plan with three different people is never easy.”Gill, 26, now holds formal leadership roles in all three formats as Test and ODI captain and vice-captain of the T20I team. “Hopefully not, he is still quite young,” Agarkar said when asked about the risk of Gill burning out given his workload. “We hope there is no burnout. It is true there is a lot of cricket coming thick and fast over the next few months in particular. We will try and manage it as best as we can, but you also want to, like I said, give the guy enough time to try and prepare going into that next World Cup, which is 24 months away, but may not be that many games, so we want to give him the best possible chance.”ESPNcricinfo Ltd

Rohit, 38, was India’s full-time ODI captain from December 2021. Overall, he led India in 56 ODIs, winning 42, losing 12, with one tie and another no-result. He led India to the 2018 Asia Cup title as stand-in captain, and then to the 2023 Asia Cup title as full-time captain. Under his leadership, India made the final of the 2023 ODI World Cup. His tenure culminated in India winning the Champions Trophy.Gill had also become India’s Test captain following Rohit’s retirement from the format in May ahead of India’s tour of England this summer. In his maiden series as Test captain, Gill led India to a 2-2 draw in England, and finished as the highest run-scorer with 754 runs at an average of 75.40.With Rohit and Kohli both retired from Tests and T20Is, the upcoming ODI series in Australia will be their first international appearance in more than seven months. After the three ODIs in Australia, their next opportunities to play for India are in the three-ODI home series against South Africa in November-December and against New Zealand in January.India play three ODIs in Australia on October 19, 23 and 25, followed by five T20Is from October 29 to November 8.

Toss The toss in Dubai turned out to be a formality with Pakistan surprisingly choosing to bat first after Salman Agha called it right. Dubai has usually been a venue for chasing under lights. The chasing team has won the last three T20I meetings between these two sides at this venue – Pakistan twice and India once. Yet Pakistan have decided to bat first and trust their spinners to defend the total.India were looking to bowl anyway. And they have retained the XI that they used in their first game against UAE, which meant Kuldeep Yadav and Varun Chakravarthy were both part of their attack again. Pakistan also stuck with their XI from their game against Oman, meaning Haris Rauf remained on the bench.Pakistan: 1 Sahibzada Farhan, 2 Saim Ayub, 3 Fakhar Zaman, 4 Salman Agha (capt), 5 Hasan Nawaz, 6 Mohammad Haris (wk), 7 Mohammad Nawaz, 8 Faheem Ashraf, 9 Shaheen Shah Afridi, 10 Sufiyan Muqeem, 11 Abrar Ahmed.India 1 Abhishek Sharma, 2 Shubman Gill, 3 Sanju Samson (wk), 4 Suryakumar Yadav (capt), 5 Tilak Varma, 6 Shivam Dube, 7 Hardik Pandya, 8 Axar Patel, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Jasprit Bumrah, 11 Varun Chakravarthy.

An England XI will face the Prime Minister’s XI in a two-day pink-ball match in Canberra in late November ahead of the day-night Ashes Test at the Gabba.The match at Manuka Oval will take place on November 29 and 30, starting four days after the opening Test in Perth and finishing three days before the pink-ball Test in Brisbane, which this season is the venue for the day-night encounter instead of the traditional Adelaide Oval.It will provide England’s players a chance to acclimatise to the pink ball in match conditions in what was traditionally a one-day fixture before becoming a multi-day game in 2022-23 when West Indies were the opposition.Last season the game was reduced to a two-dayer against India but became a one-day contest due to rain. However, it still had a major bearing on the Test series with Sam Konstas flaying a century which played a significant part in him earning a call-up for the MCG.The PM’s XI match will be England’s only fixture outside of the five Tests once the Ashes begins. They will prepare for the series with a three-day game against England Lions at Lilac Hill in Perth, although that is expected to consist more of centre-wicket practice scenarios rather than being a fully-fledged match. However, tickets for the opening day have already sold out.Unlike the two matches England Lions will play – against a CA XI and Australia A – that run concurrently with the first two Ashes Tests, the PM’s XI contest does not clash with the Sheffield Shield.Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: “An Ashes series is something every cricket fan looks forward to. Like many Australians I grew up admiring, and begrudging, the brilliance of players like Ian Botham, David Gower, and Graham Gooch.”I look forward to meeting with the selectors to finalise a PM’s XI squad that showcases the best available talent from across Australia to take on the strong English team.”