Brendon McCullum To skip Upcoming Tours In Africa Due To Fatigue

Brendon McCullum To skip Upcoming Tours In Africa Due To Fatigue: New Zealand skipper Brendon McCullum set to miss the upcoming limited overs tours of Zimbabwe and South Africa because of tight schedule and fatigue. According to an NZC release, he’s had an “intense period of cricket dating back to the World Cup.”

NZC said its annual contracting process will be completed next week and the list of players being offered contracts will be announced on July 1. “It’s a critical time for the team,” McCullum said. “We’ve had a very good past 18 months but we’ve got some real challenges ahead of us and we need to keep making progress. This is a young, emerging side with some very big series on the horizon and it’s a really exciting time to be involved.

McCullum has led the Black caps side to the world cup final this year, and also captained the team against England in the recently concluded tour. It is clear that McCullum must have been exhausted owing to these continuous high intense tournaments. McCullum, however, has committed to leading New Zealand in the home and away series against Australia at the end of 2015 and the 2016 World T20 in March, putting to rest recent speculation that he may give up ODI cricket.

At the end of the tour, McCullum was non-committal while answering a question about his ODI future, and said: “I don’t know. We’ll wait and see. We’ll let the dust settle on this. It’s been a great year, an incredible summer for us. We’ve scaled some heights that hadn’t been done before from our country … I’ve enjoyed the last two years. The body’s a bit sore at the moment but we’ll see what happens.”