Stephen Fleming To Lead Hamilton Twenty20

The first big name of next month’s Titans International Twenty20 has been penned in with the announcement today that former BLACKCAPS skipper Stephen Fleming will captain the Samsung Masters against their Australian rivals.

The NZCPA has confirmed Fleming, Craig McMillan and Bryan Young for the February 24 spectacle at Hamilton’s Seddon Park, where the New Zealand side will take on the ACA Masters XI in a trans-Tasman Twenty20 showdown. Further star signings are expected to follow later this week.

New Zealand’s highest-capped test and one-day international player, Stephen Fleming captained the BLACKCAPS in all forms of the game for a decade. With 98 wins from 218 matches, he holds the record as the most successful captain in New Zealand international cricket history and, with a test batting average over 40, was also one of our most successful batsmen when he retired from the BLACKCAPS in 2008.

The Titans International Twenty20 is a return to where it all began for Fleming, having made his New Zealand and test debut at Seddon Park as a 20-year-old in 1994.

Craig McMillan played many of his 55 test and 197 one-day-internationals alongside Fleming as a dynamic middle order batsman renowned for his ability to score quickly. Some of McMillan’s most memorable innings were at Seddon Park, with a match-winning one-day century in a 2007 Chappell-Hadlee Trophy match not unlike the type of innings we now see in Twenty20 cricket.

Bryan Young played many matches at Seddon Park as Northern Districts’ long-time wicketkeeper/batsman before successfully reinventing himself as an opening batsman late in his career. Young went on to play 34 tests and 74 one-day internationals for the BLACKCAPS with his best innings a match-winning century against Pakistan in 1994. He scored a second double century against Sri Lanka in 1997.

Tickets to the Titans International Twenty20 match, scheduled for a Thursday evening, go on sale in early February via Ticketek with negotiations also underway to televise the trans-Tasman spectacle.