{"id":424690,"date":"2026-02-14T03:15:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T03:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/424690\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T03:15:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T03:15:12","slug":"sikandar-raza-zimbabwe-t20-captain-joins-worcestershire-for-2026-blast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/424690\/","title":{"rendered":"Sikandar Raza: Zimbabwe T20 captain joins Worcestershire for 2026 Blast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Worcestershire have signed Zimbabwe T20 captain Sikandar Raza to play in this summer&#8217;s T20 Blast tournament.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 39-year-old Pakistan-born all-rounder will replace Australia left-arm seamer Ben Dwarshuis after he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/cricket\/articles\/cn0yqpvk8y5o\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">was withdrawn from his deal<\/a> by Cricket Australia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Raza has played more than 300 international matches for Zimbabwe across all formats and led his team <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/cricket\/articles\/cy4wp31nz19o\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">to a stunning 23-run win over Australia<\/a> in Colombo on Friday at the T20 World Cup, which is being held in India and Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Sikandar&#8217;s stats in T20 cricket speak for themselves and as a side who want to kick on in the Blast and challenge for the trophy, we know the importance of having real quality in key areas,&#8221; Pears head coach Alan Richardson <a href=\"https:\/\/wccc.co.uk\/news\/sikandarraza\/\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told the club website., external<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;With Ben (Dwarshuis) unable to join us, we wanted to make sure we had someone with international pedigree and who can impact the game in all three facets, so we were very keen to get Sikandar on board as soon as we knew he was available.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Worcestershire have signed Zimbabwe T20 captain Sikandar Raza to play in this summer&#8217;s T20 Blast tournament. The 39-year-old&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-424690","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\/424690","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=424690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}