Tom Latham will lead New Zealand for pre-Champions Trophy tri-series

New Zealand opening batsman Tom Latham will be leading the side in the tri-series with Ireland and Bangladesh next month.  One of two wicketkeeping options for the Kiwis, his new role for their final outing before the upcoming Champions Trophy in England shows that the 25-year-old is used to taking up responsibilities.

The decision was made because New Zealand’s official captain will be busy in India with the Sunrisers Hyderabad when New Zealand will play the tri-series. However, this can be a great chance for Latham to prove his captaincy skills and become the successor to Williamson from now itself.

Along with opening the batting and captaining, he is also expected to be the gloveman during the build-up to their Champions Trophy opener against Australia at Edgbaston on June 2.

Mike Hesson, New Zealand’s head coach indicated that the matches in Clontarf and Dublin would be critical for them as far as getting a pecking order between Luke Ronchi and Latham is concerned, who had a turn each for keeping the wickets but performed bad with the bat in the recent 3-2 series loss to South Africa.

However, Latham does not pay much attention to the bygone and looks ahead of the future to perform better.  He scored only nine runs in the five ODIs in which he also did wicketkeeping during the summer.

“The options are open there … for me it’s about fitting in with whatever is best for the team.

“With me opening and keeping, it means we can have an extra batsman in the middle-order. I’m confident either way to do whatever skill and to be honest I probably exceeded my expectations with keeping.”

Although Latham started well, making a test and ODI hundred before mid-January, the same could not be said about his finish to the summer with the bat.

And with the new responsibility of captaining the side, it can get more challenging for him.