3 Batters Who Will Be Crucial For New Zealand In Champions Trophy 2025

Bhargav Dixit

Mitchell Santner will lead in an ICC event for the first time. [Source: @BLACKCAPS/X]Mitchell Santner will lead in an ICC event for the first time. [Source: @BLACKCAPS/X]

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In the last 10 years, New Zealand have played ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 final, ICC World Twenty20 2016 semi-final, ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 final, ICC T20 World Cup 2021 final, ICC T20 World Cup 2022 semi-final and ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 semi-final. In short, barring ICC T20 World Cup 2024, they managed to qualify for all other multi-team global events in limited-overs cricket.

For a team which has never won a white-ball ICC event in the last two decades in spite of qualifying for the knockouts of all such events in the last decade, it is high time for the Black Caps to taste the ultimate success. Desperate to lift ICC Champions Trophy next month, New Zealand would require the following batters to stand tall on their respective potential:

Kane Williamson

Slated to play his first ODI since the last World Cup, it will be for the first time in nine years when Kane Williamson will be playing in the format as a specialist batter and not as a captain. To get the ball rolling, Williamson is New Zealand’s fourth-highest ODI run-scorer in Asia; highest among active players.

If truth be told, in spite of him not being available for all international matches nowadays, Williamson remains the Kiwis’ first name on the team sheet especially in ODIs and Tests. The fact that he scored three half-centuries across four innings during his last ODI outing in Asia confirms how restricted availability seldom restricts him from outperforming others.

Daryl Mitchell

Only the second No. 4 batter in history to score more than 500 runs in an ODI World Cup, Daryl Mitchell was their only hope in terms of powering them to a third straight World Cup final in Mumbai 15 months ago. Fifth-highest run-scorer in that tournament, Mitchell’s strike rate of 111.06 was the second-best among the top six run-getters.

For New Zealand batters with a minimum of 500 ODI runs in the subcontinent, the right-handed batter’s average of 53.05 is the highest. In fact, he is their only batter to average in excess of 50. Additionally, a strike rate of 100.84 across 19 innings is icing on the cake.

Rachin Ravindra

Rachin Ravindra might not be as experienced as wicket-keeper batter Tom Latham but he has been able to pin him down in this piece because of his second position on the list which is topped by Mitchell. In 14 ODI innings in the subcontinent, the left-handed batter has scored 625 runs at an average of 48.07 and a strike rate of 106.29 (both bettered by only Mitchell).

Ravindra, however, outdid Mitchell on the back of scoring 578 runs at an average and strike rate of 64.22 and 106.44 respectively during the 2023 World Cup. Set to open the batting alongside Devon Conway (who is third behind Mitchell and Ravindra in terms of ODI average in Asia), Ravindra’s returns will literally lay the foundation for his team in the forthcoming Champions Trophy.