Taylor retired from international cricket in 2022 after playing more matches for New Zealand than any other player: 112 Tests, 236 one-day internationals and 102 T20 internationals.<\/p>\n
He remains second behind Kane Williamson on New Zealand’s all-time Test scoring list with 7683 runs and second, also behind Williamson, with 19 Test centuries.<\/p>\n
“It’s official \u2013 I’m proud to announce that I’ll be pulling on the blue and representing Samoa in cricket,” Taylor said in a social media post.<\/p>\n
“This is more than just a return to the game I love \u2014 it’s the huge honour to represent my heritage, culture, villages, and family.”<\/p>\n
Taylor’s mother, Lote, was born in Samoa. Taylor will play under his given names and chiefly title as Leaupepe Luteru Ross Poutoa Lote Taylor.<\/p>\n
The 41-year-old answered the call of his friend, former Black Cap Tarun Nethula, to join Samoa at the qualifying tournament. Samoa will play Papua New Guinea for a place at next year’s T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n
“It’s quite a powerful thing when players are asking you to come out of retirement and help them,” Taylor said.<\/p>\n
“It’s been a few months in the pipeline, but obviously the team just got announced today.<\/p>\n
“It’s exciting to represent the country of my mother’s birth. I always wanted to give back to the Polynesian community in some sort of way.<\/p>\n
“I’m no spring chicken but I’m sure I’m still fit enough to run around the boundary.”<\/p>\n
With Reuters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taylor retired from international cricket in 2022 after playing more matches for New Zealand than any other player:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-120043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}