The BLACKCAPS have finished their white-ball tour of Bangladesh on a high note, winning their final T20 International on a rain-interrupted day in Mirpur, Dhaka, to level the Series 1-1.

The six-wicket DLS win also marked the T20 International debut of Stags left-arm spinner Jayden Lennox who celebrated with a wicket first ball.

Later in the same match, Stags teammate Josh Clarkson pocketed his best T20 figures by taking 3/9 in a tight performance, while Dean Foxcroft's calm precision helped bring home a chase of 104 in a match reduced to 15 overs per side.

With six Central Stags having been selected for the post-season ODI and T20i tour, the odds were always on Stags players contributing strongly to the results and the Central players topped a number of the key tour stats for the BLACKCAPS.

Lennox's T20i debut came off the back of his consistent showing in ODI cricket in his late-blooming career.

On this short tour, he was New Zealand's top equal ODI wicket-taker: five victims at a tidy average and economy rate, just ahead of Blair Tickner whose 4/40 in Mirpur was his third four-for from his last four ODI appearances since his October 2025 international recall.

Tickner's bowling average on this tour was in single figures, but the big pace bowler ultimately returned home a couple of days early from the tour.

A rain-soaked week had threatened to derail Tickner's carefully plotted way back from an ankle injury, after he had missed much of the Stags' 2025/26 summer (first with a dislocated shoulder while fielding in the BLACKCAPS' Test team, and then with the ankle).

Pace bowlers need to steadily build up their physical bowling 'loads' to be able to sustain the rigours of top-level cricket, so the BLACKCAPS management team sent him back to New Zealand before the final T20 International in Dhaka in order to guarantee the ability to stay on track in the high performance training nets back home. 

That suggests Tickner remains very much in the frame for the BLACKCAPS' next outings this winter: a one-off four-day Test match against Ireland in Belfast starting on 27 May, followed by a full three-match Test series against England that begins at Lord's in early June.

The BLACKCAPS opened their Bangladesh tour with a 26-run win in challenging, hot conditions before the hosts bounced back to take that series 1-2. 

Foxcroft made the most of his international recall, finishing as New Zealand's top equal highest run-scorer in the ODI Series with 149 runs from his three innings at a healthy 49.66 average. 

He got his first ODI half century (59 in Mirpur) and then backed up with a new career-best 75 in Chattogram - blasting seven sixes in that innings as the BLACKCAPS tried to hold on for an unlikely victory.

Keeper Dane Cleaver didn't get a start in the ODI Series, but his stylish strokeplay came to the fore in Chattogram where he raced to the second T20i half century of his 13-match career.

Cleaver finished just a handful of runs behind Bevon Jacobs as the leading BLACKCAPS run-makers on the truncated T20i leg of the tour.

Clarkson meanwhile finished as the top wicket-taker of the T20i Series, equal with Bangladesh star Shoriful Islam.

Clarkson's four wickets came with a bowling average of just 9.25 as the big-hitter continued to prove himself deceptively effective with the ball.

Meanwhile in Sri Lanka, Curtis Heaphy completed another strong showing on tour for New Zealand A.

The young batter finished as the top first-class run-scorer from either side by some distance with his 221 runs at a 73.66 average from the three red-ball games. 

That included a knock of 162 for the patient opener, backing up with a half century.

The 22-year-old from Palmerston North now has five first-class centuries to his name at a 44.38 average.

Article added: Sunday 3 May 2026