New Zealand captain Kane Williamson will miss the second Test against England after testing positive for Covid-19 the night before the match.
Trent Bridge(England)- New Zealand saw their hopes of levelling the ongoing series against England suffer a significant setback after Kane Williamson, captain and leading batsman, was ruled out of today’s second Test after contracting Covid-19.
Williamson was present at training on Thursday and in an upbeat pre-match press conference extolled the virtues of Test cricket in response to a recent forecast from Greg Barclay, chair of the International Cricket Council, that the format will shrink in future.
But late in the evening news broke that the 31-year-old has tested positive for the virus. A five-day isolation period follows – Williamson could in theory return for the third Test at Headingley – and now Tom Latham will lead the tourists in Nottingham as they look to fight back from the five-wicket defeat at Lord’s.
Asked earlier for his response to Barclay’s prediction that Test cricket will be cut amid the rise of domestic Twenty20 leagues, Williamson said: “We love our Test cricket, as do all nations who have the opportunity to play it. It’s the pinnacle of the sport and we want to see more of it. There’s a number of people who have to make decisions but there’s certainly love for it among Test nations.”
New Zealand, the world champions, already battle for fixtures and this three-match series against England is a rarity. Their lack of fixtures is demonstrated by the fact that Williamson made his Test debut in 2010, two years prior to Joe Root, and before his positive result was in line for the 88th cap to Root’s 119th.
Williamson has 24 Test centuries – two fewer than Root – but had been battling for form on tour. After a poor IPL campaign of one half-century and a strike rate below 100, the right-hander suffered a golden duck in their solitary warm-up and was nicked off early in both innings at Lord’s by the England debutant Matt Potts.
Though New Zealand lost a tight series opener that could have gone either way, those two failures for Williamson were overcome as Daryl Mitchell (108) and Tom Blundell (96) at least fired in their second innings. England’s batting unit remains far more reliant on Root’s class – even if Ben Stokes and Ben Foakes supported his celestial unbeaten 115 in the run chase – and this is another case of hoping the supporting cast steps up.
This did not occur in Nottingham last year when Root’s scores of 64 and 109 against India – perhaps his finest Test century – made for another lone-hand performance in a rain-affected draw. As Root explained after hitting the winning runs at Lord’s last Sunday, he was also defying the strains of captaincy.