Black Caps batter Mark Chapman has opted out of a central contract with New Zealand Cricket to pursue opportunities overseas.<\/p>\n
Chapman has made the decision to shift to a casual contract with New Zealand Cricket to allow him to play in this summer’s Big Bash in Australia.<\/p>\n
Chapman remains available for selection for the upcoming India tour of New Zealand alongside the four other casually contracted players in Finn Allen, Lockie Ferguson, Adam Milne and Tim Seifert.<\/p>\n
The men’s competition in the Big Bash starts in early December.<\/p>\n
“The upcoming India series is one all us players are really excited for, and I’m committed wholeheartedly to performing in that series,” Chapman said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Chapman, 32, has played 150 white ball internationals for New Zealand.<\/p>\n
His shift means Northern Districts fast bowler Matthew Fisher earns his first ever central contract and completes the list of 20 players for the 2026-27 season.<\/p>\n
“With the heavy schedule of cricket coming up, notably the Test matches against India, Australia, and Sri Lanka, we know we’ll need good depth in our fast-bowling stocks,” selector Gavin Larsen said.<\/p>\n
“Matt is someone able to bowl that express pace which is extremely valuable to the balance of any side, so we’re excited to have him on the central contract list.”<\/p>\n
Fisher, who has featured in all three formats for New Zealand, recently took a career-best ODI figures of 3\/40 against the West Indies.<\/p>\n
The first match of the India tour is on 22 October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Black Caps batter Mark Chapman has opted out of a central contract with New Zealand Cricket to pursue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-593296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}