Tom Latham ready to take charge of ODI team - Cricket Winner

Veteran New Zealand player Tom Latham, who has led New Zealand in 44 ODIs, is one of the frontrunners to take up the captaincy duty full-time after Kane Williamson decided to step down. Latham, who has filled in during Williamson’s absence earlier also including at the 2023 Cricket World Cup, is open to taking charge.

“It would obviously be a real honour,” Latham said on Wednesday (July 17). “For me it’s always been about trying to put the team first as best as possible and I’m sure they’ll have those discussions around what they want from a team point of view and certainly if I get the opportunity to do that it would be really special.”

However, it will be interesting to see if New Zealand seek a single captain for both white-ball teams as Latham hasn’t featured in a T20I XI for over a year. Test captain, Tim Southee, could then be an option for the role of all three sides as well.

Coach Gary Stead also revealed that although the management hadn’t reached the final stage of selection yet, Tom Latham was definitely on their shortlist for being named captain as well.

“We’re not at the stage of confirming it yet, so I don’t want to speculate whether Tom will be [named captain] or not. But he’s certainly one guy that will be in discussions around that role,” Stead said. “The important thing is whoever is in place, we want in place for two to three years or so, leading to that next [ODI] World Cup. That will be one of the important decision-making factors that we discuss.”

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“We’ve got a lot of cricket in the summer [and] got an ICC pinnacle event” – Tom Latham

However, soon after a poor T20 World Cup campaign last month, Kane Williamson, Lockie Ferguson and Adam Milne have declined their central contracts with the former captain taking up a casual contract as well. However, Williamson is likely to play the bulk of New Zealand’s international fixtures in all three formats now as well.

“I think at the moment where cricket’s going in New Zealand is slightly different. It’s certainly not a black and white situation, and certainly changing with all these leagues popping up. Guess everyone is in a slightly different boat in what their future may look like depending on their age or stage they are in life,” Latham said.

“Don’t know what the right system is, there is a lot of flexibility within our contracts at the moment, but I think with the changing landscape of cricket I’m sure it will be something that New Zealand Cricket and the players’ association look at and try and come up with something,” he again said.

“We’ve seen over many years now, at times we haven’t had those senior guys. That gives me an opportunity as a senior player to step up and lead as well. But also other guys who haven’t necessarily had opportunities in the past to step up in different leadership roles. It’s never great when you miss guys of Kane’s calibre, but it gives opportunities to other guys to put their best foot forward,” he further stated.

However, New Zealand have a big summer after they tour India in October later this year, with the likes of England, Sri Lanka and Pakistan all travelling either side of the Champions Trophy as well.

“We’ve got a lot of cricket in the summer [and] got an ICC pinnacle event [the Champions Trophy] which is exciting to look forward to. So whether it be with different personnel, whether it be with the guys we are used to having, whenever we can have them I’m sure that will be great, but think we’ve certainly got to be pretty fluid with what things look like in the future,” Tom Latham concluded.