Rachin Ravindra puts Black Caps over T20 mercenary career

By Alex Powell

As the future of cricket continues to come under the microscope amid shifting trends in the world game, Black Caps all-rounder Rachin Ravindra emphasises he’s committed to playing for his country.

While the team of the late 2010s and early 2020s will go down as arguably the best to ever wear the silver fern, recent years have seen a dramatic changing of the guard.

While the likes of Ross Taylor, BJ Watling, Colin de Grandhomme have retired, a further host of players have opted out of central contracts in order to ply their trade at Twenty20 guns for hire.

In 2022, Trent Boult was the first to take that step, before Martin Guptill and Jimmy Neesham followed.

And in the wake of New Zealand’s T20 World Cup exit earlier this year, Kane Williamson, Lockie Ferguson and Adam Milne have all also opted to go down that same route.

In all instances, players made it clear they wanted to play for New Zealand but not at the expense of maximising their commercial opportunities in the final years of their careers.

For Kiwi fans, though, the worry will be what happens when a younger player opts to go down that same route. At 24, Ravindra no longer represents the future of New Zealand cricket; he’s now its present.

However, his breakout performance at last year’s World Cup in India and efforts against South Africa and Australia over the last home summer have seen him become an all-format player.

What’s more, those displays have also earned him not only a first NZ Cricket contract but also a $350,000 deal to play in the Indian Premier League with Stephen Fleming’s Chennai Super Kings.

Since New Zealand’s T20 World Cup exit, Ravindra has also been with the Washington Freedom in American Major League Cricket, which is broadcast to New Zealand exclusively on Prime Video.

But while his skillset as a batting all-rounder would make him an asset for any franchise outfit, Ravindra makes no bones of where he sees his immediate future.

“I can only talk for my situation,” he told the Herald. “I’m fully committed to playing for New Zealand at this current stage of time. You never know what the situation will look like in the future.

“As of right now, I can only speak for what’s happening now. For me, I’m committed to playing for New Zealand and whatever comes up in between, I’ll pick up.”

However, regardless of Ravindra’s commitment, the trends of the global game are all pointing towards the franchise game taking centre stage.

In Williamson’s case, it’s understood a soon-to-be-announced deal with a franchise in South Africa’s SA20 competition was worth more financially than the NZ Cricket contract he turned down.

And with T20 leagues popping up wherever there seems to be space on the international calendar, the tug of war between club and country will only continue.

Still in the infancy of his Black Caps career, though, Ravindra sees the value of the international game.

“There’s still a lot of context for international cricket, there’s a lot of context for world tournaments [and] World Cups,” he continued.

“The World Test Championship puts emphasis on every test match you play. For a lot of people, test match cricket is still the pinnacle.

“I’m not sure if that’s going to die out. But as of right now, everyone still values [international cricket] ahead of the franchise stuff.”

Since breaking into the team in mid-2023, Ravindra has effectively been playing non-stop, around the world.

Last year’s World Cup was followed by the New Zealand home summer, which was then followed by the IPL and T20 World Cup.

That led straight into Major League Cricket, with only a short time between that and a gruelling tour of Asia, where the Black Caps will face Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and India, before their home summer and another tournament, the ICC Champions Trophy in Pakistan.

However, the focus on ICC events - where at least one will be held every year between now and 2031 at the earliest - comes at a cost.

For the Black Caps, whose home season schedule was announced last week, that comes in the shape of just one test series over the summer.

And having only just broken into the test ranks, where he looks to have given the Black Caps a solution to the No 4 slot that’s been problematic since Taylor’s retirement at the start of 2022, there is mixed emotion about the shortage of long-form cricket.

“If you ask most cricketers, they’ll always say they want to play more tests, especially during the home summer.

“But I understand the complexities of scheduling and how difficult it is to have these windows, especially when you have an ICC tournament smack bang in the middle of the summer.

“It’s obviously difficult. I know how good the Aussie test series was for fans and for us. It was a great series to be part of.

“We’ll play whatever cricket we can. We love playing test cricket, a lot of us still think it’s the pinnacle.”

For now, though, Ravindra is exactly where he wants to be in Major League Cricket.

While there may be arguments against franchise cricket in the threat it is to the international game, Ravindra’s time with Washington affords him the chance to share the field with some of the game’s best.

Aside from Black Caps teammate Lockie Ferguson, Ravindra is also able to pick the brains of Australian stars Steve Smith, Glenn Maxwell and Travis Head for advice with the bat, and West Indian Akeal Hossein with the ball.

With 32 test centuries and close to 10,000 runs in the format, Smith is the perfect sounding board as a batter, while Head was man-of-the-match in both the 2023 World Test Championship and World Cup finals.

What’s more, his coach is Australian icon Ricky Ponting, who scored more than 13,000 runs across both tests and ODIs.

And be it conscious or otherwise, sharing time with players and coaches of that quality will only impact Ravindra’s game positively.

“It’s good, it’s been cool so far. It’s obviously a wee bit different playing in the US compared to where I’ve experienced before, but it’s been fun.

“It’s interesting sharing dressing rooms with different guys from different countries - especially Aussies.

“They’re world-class players, being able to take everything I can from them has been great.

“Trav is in the form of his life the last two years, he hasn’t put a foot wrong. Smudger [Smith] is one of the greatest players of all time. It’s great to be able to pick their brains and see how they go about their business.

“Having Punter [Ponting] as coach too, another guy who’s conquered it all, teaches you that competitive winning mindset.

“I’ve taken a lot from it so far.”

This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission