The Black Caps are going to take on the Aussies on their home

In international cricket, the Australian cricket team is now touring New Zealand for the Twenty20 bilateral series. The series is set to begin with the first T20 match on February 22 at Hagley Oval (Christchurch). Aiming at the T20 World Cup (2021) which is going to be held in India this year, the 15-day tour has been arranged with five T20 matches. The matches will be held at five venues from February 22 to March 7.

This is the first time the Australian cricket team is going to New Zealand since February 2018. Although the three-match T20 series was scheduled for March 2020, it was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic then.

Australia and New Zealand have met in a total of 9 matches since 2005. Australia has won 7 matches of them and New Zealand has won 1 match and drawn 1 match of them. New Zealand won the match that was drawn by the Super Over. New Zealand also lost to Australia in the latest tri-nation T20 series. They faced each other three times in the series. Australia won all the 3 matches. In the second match of that series, New Zealand scored their team’s highest (243) runs against Australia. But the Black Caps still did not win the match. The Aussies won the match by 5 wickets with 7 balls in hand.

Australia has lost their last three T20 matches in the series against India (2-1). New Zealand has won their last T20 series against Pakistan (2-1) on the other hand. So even though Australia is ahead in terms of statistics, the New Zealand team is in great form in the present days. Moreover this time the Black Caps are playing on home soil, they will try their best to make the series memorable.

Australia is ranked 2nd and New Zealand is ranked 6th in the ICC T20 rankings. So to build a strong position in the ranking table, New Zealand must hold on to success in this series as well.

T20 Squad:

New Zealand – Kane Williamson (c), Hamish Bennett, Kyle Jamieson, Mark Chapman, Trent Boult, Ish Sodhi, Mitchell Santner, Devon Conway, Tim Seifert (wk), Martin Guptill, James Neesham, Glenn Phillips (wk), Tim Southee, Finn Allen.

Australia – Andrew Tye, Matthew Wade (wk), Ashton Turner, Jason Behrendorff, Aaron Finch (c), Ashton Agar, Mitchell Marsh, Ben McDermott (wk), Josh Philippe (wk), Jhye Richardson, Glenn Maxwell, Riley Meredith, Kane Richardson, Tanveer Sangha, Marcus Stoinis, Daniel Sams, D’Arcy Short, Adam Zampa.

T20 match schedule for New Zealand and Australia:

1st T20 – 22 February, Hagley Oval (Christchurch), 12:00 (GMT+6)

2nd T20 – 25 February, University of Otago Oval (Dunedin), 07:00 (GMT+6)

3rd T20 – 3 March, Wellington Regional Stadium (Wellington), 12:00 (GMT+6)

4th T20 – 5 March, Eden Park (Auckland), 12:00 (GMT+6)

5th T20 – 7 March, Bay Oval (Mount Maunganui), 09:00 (GMT+6)

The T20 series between Australia and New Zealand is coming up. Predict the winner of every match & play on Baji!