New Zealand announced their squad on Thursday for the upcoming T20I series against England, a likeable bunch of familiars, who…

Hold on. Who the hell is Blair Tickner?

Who is he?

A right-arm fast-medium bowler, he has played once before for New Zealand in a T20I against India.

How’d he start?

Tickner spent several seasons playing club cricket in England. During the 2014 season, playing for Waresley in the Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Cricket League, he took 54 wickets at 15.94. He was soon picked up by Central Districts, where he has played ever since, becoming a regular in the first team in the 2015/16 season. The following year, he took 5-19 in a Twenty20 against Auckland.

What happened next?

His breakthrough season was 2017/18, in which he took thirty wickets at 29.03 as Central Districts regained the Plunket Shield. This included a hat-trick against Wellington at Nelson, and he was the leading wicket-taker in that year’s Super Smash.

He was picked to play for New Zealand A for their tour of the United Arab Emirates, and back on home turf he took 4-80 in the first of an otherwise unremarkable three games against India A. In February this year, he was called up to the national side to face India in a T20I at Hamilton, taking 1-34 with the wicket of Rishabh Pant.

Challenges?

Tickner sprained his ankle training with the national side shortly after his debut, causing him to miss Central Districts’ first Super Smash title in nine years. With a first-class bowling average of nearly 40, he is clearly more suited to the shorter form. So far, he has failed to impress on the international stage – he took just one wicket in the two matches he played against Australia XI this summer.

Final word

On his only NZ wicket to date: ‘”I’m pretty sure I said I was going to bowl a slow and wide ball but it ended up coming out quite full so, nah, it was the plan to go out wide so I was pretty happy with that in the end.”