July 26 (Reuters) – Henry Nicholls \u2060has locked down New Zealand’s number three test spot \u2060after his performances helped secure a 2-1 series victory over \u200cEngland, head coach Rob Walter said.<\/p>\n
FormerNew Zealand captain Kane Williamson last month quit international cricket in the middle of the series in England after scoring zero \u200band 18 in the opening test.<\/p>\n
Nicholls stepped \u2060into Williamson’s number three position \u2060for the last two tests and scored 197 runs, including his \u206011th \u200ccentury in the longest format, as New Zealand won both matches and clinched the series.<\/p>\n
“I think Henry wouldn’t \u2060have wanted to get his opportunity through Kane’s retirement \u200bbecause that was \u200cin itself a loss for the team,” Walter told \u2060reporters.<\/p>\n
“However, he’s still \u200ba highly experienced guy with lots of performance under the belt, and could come in on the back of strong performances domestically, earning \u2060his spot back and taking that number \u200bthree spot.<\/p>\n
“So certainly I won’t be giving that number three to anyone else because he’s deserved it.”<\/p>\n
Prior to the two wins over England, \u2060Nicholls had featured in just two tests since 2023.<\/p>\n
“Ultimately, it’s a lesson for anyone that there’s always going to be these disappointments of being left out of the team,” Walter added.<\/p>\n
“But all \u200byou can do is just go back, \u2060work hard, put some runs on the board, put performances on \u200bthe board, win games for your team.”<\/p>\n
New \u200cZealand next host India in a \u200bmulti-format series, which runs from October 22 to December 1.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Aadi Nair in Mumbai; Editing by Kim Coghill)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"July 26 (Reuters) – Henry Nicholls \u2060has locked down New Zealand’s number three test spot \u2060after his performances…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":824599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,6675,85],"class_list":["post-824598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-na","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824598","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=824598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/824599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}