Quantcast

Warner given rest before NZ trip

Australia's stand-in T20I captain will head home for two days following AB Medal to get a much-needed break ahead of South Africa

Australia's T20I stand-in captain David Warner will be given a break to freshen up mentally before the next tri-series match in New Zealand.

Coach Darren Lehmann told reporters Warner would appear at the Allan Border Medal evening in Melbourne tonight before flying home to Sydney on Tuesday.

The remainder of the T20I squad will head to New Zealand on Tuesday with Warner to join them for Friday's clash against the Kiwis in Auckland.

"It will just give him a couple of days at home really," Lehmann said. "It's always a challenge with the schedule as it is, but David is really keen to play as captain.

"So we'll give him a couple of days off and get him to New Zealand the day before the game."

Warner is deputising for skipper Steve Smith, who was rested after the one-day international series against England.

Lehmann said the need for consistent messaging from on-field leadership meant one of those two was required to play, but the long campaign has taken a toll on Warner's output at the crease.

After averaging 14.60 during the five-match ODI series, Warner has made scores of six, four and two to start the triangular T20I series.

The opener is the only member of the victorious Ashes side to feature in all three formats of the game this Australian summer.

"He'd obviously like some more runs but he's been fantastic in the leadership role with the young guys," Lehmann said.

"He's been training hard ... there's no dramas at the moment.

"He can only do so much work ... he's been working so hard that it's almost like (it would help) to just give him a couple of days away from the game.

"(New assistant coach) Ricky Ponting has been doing some really good work with him, so we'd expect him to come out of that rut pretty quickly."

Warner is no stranger to emerging from slumps in style; last year there were question marks over his output in Asia after a lean set of numbers during the four-Test series in India, only for the left-hander to then crash consecutive centuries in two Tests in Bangladesh.

Warner also has every reason to be confident of making runs in South Africa, given his performance there four years ago, when he was the leading run-scorer with 543 runs at 90.50, with three hundreds and two fifties in the three-Test series. 

Gillette T20 trans-Tasman Tri-Series

Australia squad: David Warner (c), Aaron Finch (vc), Ashton Agar, Alex Carey, Ben Dwarshuis, Travis Head, Chris Lynn, Glenn Maxwell, Kane Richardson, D'Arcy Short, Billy Stanlake, Marcus Stoinis, Andrew Tye, Adam Zampa.

England squad: Eoin Morgan (c), Sam Billings, Jos Buttler, Sam Curran, Tom Curran, Liam Dawson, Alex Hales, Chris Jordan, Dawid Malan, Liam Plunkett, Adil Rashid, Jason Roy, Ben Stokes, James Vince, David Willey, Mark Wood.

New Zealand squad: Kane Williamson (c), Trent Boult, Mark Chapman, Colin de Grandhomme, Martin Guptill, Anaru Kitchen, Colin Munro, Mitchell Santner, Tim Seifert, Ish Sodhi, Tim Southee, Ross Taylor, Ben Wheeler. 

First T20I Australia won by seven wickets. Scorecard

Second T20I Australia won by five wickets. Scorecard

Third T20I Australia won by seven wickets. Scorecard

Fourth T20I NZ v England, Wellington, February 14

Fifth T20I NZ v Australia, Eden Park, February 16

Sixth T20I NZ v England, Seddon Park, February 18

Final TBC, Eden Park, February 21