Kane Williamson will be absent from the third T20I against India due to a medical appointment.

Williamson Withdraws From Third T20I #Williamson

Because of a scheduled engagement, Kane Williamson, the captain of New Zealand's cricket team, will not be able to participate in the third Twenty20 International that will take place in Napier. It is anticipated that he would return to the team in time for the three One-Day Internationals that start on Friday.

Tim Southee will lead New Zealand in the third Twenty20 International in Williamson's absence, according to New Zealand's head coach Gary Stead, while Mark Chapman has been added to the team as a cover player.

Kane has been attempting to get this reservation made for quite some time now, but we just haven't been able to find the time in our calendar to accommodate it. Stead said. It is really important to us that all of our players and staff remain healthy and happy, and we are looking forward to seeing him in Auckland.

According to Stead, Williamson's medical visit had nothing to do with his elbow, an issue that the New Zealand captain has been dealing with for the past year. Williamson is the captain of the New Zealand rugby team. Because of that, he had to sit out games for both New Zealand and the Indian Premier League.

In recent times, Williamson's performance in the Twenty20 format has been the subject of significant criticism. Williamson only scored 178 runs with a strike rate of 116.33 during the Twenty20 World Cup in Australia in 2022, despite the fact that New Zealand advanced to the semifinals of the tournament. In the 2022 Indian Premier League season, his team, Sunrisers Hyderabad, finished in eighth place, and he scored only 216 runs with a strike rate of 93.51. As a result, his franchise decided to release him last week.

India prevailed in the second Twenty20 International that was played at Mount Maunganui by a score of 65 runs, thanks in large part to a century scored by Suryakumar Yadav. The first Twenty20 International that was played in Wellington was washed out. Williamson finished with the highest score for New Zealand in the chase with 61 runs off 52 balls; nevertheless, he was unable to attack the mark of 192 runs.

Before the sides go to Auckland for the first one-day international on November 25, the third and final Twenty20 international will take place in Napier on Tuesday. The second and third One-Day Internationals will be played on November 27 and 30 respectively at Hamilton and Christchurch.

Big picture

The third Twenty20 International match between New Zealand and India will be the team's final match in this format for the year. Going into 2023, they would hope to have more answers than questions under their belts.

In the powerplay, New Zealand's lack of assertiveness was further underscored by the fact that they were unable to establish any momentum with the bat while they were chasing 192 on Sunday. Although they have lost more than two wickets only once in their previous five Twenty20 Internationals, they have scored 40 runs or fewer four times in that span and have hit only two sixes, both of which were struck by Finn Allen.

There are signs that Martin Guptill's time is up, and it appears that Allen will be taking over for the foreseeable future. However, in order to have a reliable top order, they need to get the best performances out of Devon Conway and Kane Williamson. Williamson will not be playing in the third Twenty20 International because he has a medical appointment, so there will be no updates on this front on Tuesday.

When it comes to bowling, Trent Boult is now irrelevant and is no longer seen as a lock for a starting position in the team. And despite the fact that he participated in four of New Zealand's most recent five games, the team's powerplay performances resulted in three wicketless innings.

Tim Southee, the stand-in captain for the Napier team, will turn 34 in a matter of days, but the next Twenty20 World Cup won't be held for another year and a half. If things aren't going to start going New Zealand's way anytime soon, now is arguably the ideal time to start planning for the future.

After being eliminated in the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup, India required a new strategy with their top-order batting, but they were unable to accomplish this goal in the second Twenty20 international. It was hoped that the opening duo of Rishabh Pant and Ishan Kishan would get them off to a strong start. However, Pant failed to get six runs off of thirteen balls, and Kishan needed 31 deliveries to score 36 runs, despite the fact that 26 of those runs were scored in fours.

India entered this series eager to experiment with their batting, and they rearranged their lineup in order to accommodate players who were on the periphery of the team. However, as has been the case in recent times, only Suryakumar Yadav actually played his part, and he did it in spectacular fashion by scoring a blistering century.

This was a series in which there was comparably less pressure than in a World Cup, and with one more game to go, India would hope that the young players take away at least part of the load from the shoulders of the management, as well as from Suryakumar. After all, no one is aware of who the subsequent group of selectors will be or what their objectives will be in this position.

At the centre of attention

The results of James Neesham's most recent five Twenty20 Internationals read 0, 16*, 0, 6, and 5. Due to the fact that he bats sixth and comes in with little time, he is frequently required to make an immediate impact from the very first ball he faces. This certainly makes his work more difficult, but it is something that he has to do but hasn't been able to do thus far. As with Boult, he has chosen not to sign a central contract and may now be forced to make a significant move in order to remain in the running.

Rishabh Pant has been given the opportunity to open the batting for India four times so far in 2018, but he has only shown flashes of brilliance twice. Two of those four innings were played while India was batting first, including the one that took place in Mount Maunganui.

If India believes that his best position in the XI is as an opener, he now has Kishan to contend with for that spot. Even if Pant has a great game in Napier, India will still be faced with the conundrum of what to do with him when Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, and Virat Kohler return from their respective tours.

Reports from the team

The most that New Zealand can hope for is a tie in the series, which is something that they will have to try to achieve without Williamson. Southee is scheduled to take the helm, while Mark Chapman is looking well to earn a spot on the side.

New Zealand (probable): 1 Finn Allen, 2 Devon Conway (wk), 3 Mark Chapman, 4 Glenn Phillips, Daryl Mitchell, position 5, James Neesham, number 6, 7 Mitchell Santner, The eighth Tim Southee (capt), 9 Ish Sodhi, 10 Adam Milne, 11 Lockie Ferguson

Even if it means that numerous players won't have an opportunity to participate in the T20 Internationals, India might not want to make any changes to their XI lineup. Even though he has scored 2, 30, and 86 not out in his previous three innings for India, Sanju Samson will have to wait for his next opportunity with the national side if this scenario plays out. This is despite the fact that Shubman Gill has yet to make his debut in the format, and Sanju Samson has done so in one-day internationals.

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India (probable): 1 Ishan Kishan, 2 Rishabh Pant (wk), 3 Suryakumar Yadav, 4 Shreyas Iyer, 5 Deepak Hooda, 6 Hardik Pandya (capt), 7 Washington Sundar, 8 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 9 Arshdeep Singh, 10 Mohammed Siraj, 11 Yuzvendra Chahal

Conditions and the pitch of the air

The game is scheduled to begin at 7.30 p.m. local time, and the weather in Napier for the evening is forecast to be overcast and nice, with a chance of rain. The most recent Twenty20 international match at McLean Park was washed out, and the scores in the four games that were played have fluctuated depending on who batted first. The highest of those was 241 in England in 2019, which was recorded in 2019.

Statistics and anecdotes

In Mount Maunganui, Suryakumar scored 54 runs off of 16 balls in the final four overs of the game, despite the fact that he did not face a ball in the final over. In a Twenty20 international, only Yuvraj Singh's score of 58 runs has ever been higher for India during that phase.

Southee now has 132 wickets, four more than Shakib Al Hasan, who is the next top wicket-taker in Twenty20 Internationals. Southee achieved this milestone after taking three wickets in the second T20I, all of which were part of a hat-trick.

Although they had played seven ODIs and two Tests in Napier in the past, this will be India's first T20 International in the city.

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