{"id":116209,"date":"2025-09-05T11:32:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T11:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/116209\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T11:32:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T11:32:12","slug":"ross-taylor-new-zealand-great-to-make-comeback-with-samoa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/116209\/","title":{"rendered":"Ross Taylor: New Zealand great to make comeback with Samoa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">New Zealand great Ross Taylor is coming out of retirement at the age of 41 to play for Samoa in a T20 World Cup qualifier.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The former Black Caps captain, whose mother was born in Samoa, will play at the 2026 World Cup qualifier in Oman in October.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Taylor first ended a 16-year international career in 2022. He played 450 times for New Zealand across different formats, including 112 Tests. Only Kane Williamson has scored more runs for the Kiwis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s official \u2013 I&#8217;m proud to announce that I&#8217;ll be pulling on the blue and representing Samoa in cricket,&#8221; Taylor wrote on Instagram.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This is more than just a return to the game I love \u2014 it&#8217;s the huge honour to represent my heritage, culture, villages, and family.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;m excited for the opportunity to give back to the game, join the squad, and share my experience on and off the field.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Samoa join Papua New Guinea, Japan, hosts Oman, Nepal, Kuwait, Malaysia, Qatar and UAE in the qualifier for the T20 World Cup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There are three spots up for grabs for the tournament taking place in India and Sri Lanka in February and March of next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand great Ross Taylor is coming out of retirement at the age of 41 to play for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-116209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}