New Zealand Cricket (NZC) has decided to extend Gary Stead's contract as the Men's team head coach till 2025. Stead had joined the team as the coach following Mike Hesson's resignation in late 2018. His contract was supposed to end with the ODI World Cup in India later this year. However, after several lengthy discussions among officials, the board decided to continue with Stead at the helm for a couple more ICC events.
Stead will oversee New Zealand team's preparations for the T20 World Cup 2024 and Champions Trophy 2025 apart from the third World Test Championship Cycle (WTC) entirely till 2025. NZC pondered over the possibility of employing split-coaching system but the proposal was rejected. "We started talking to Gary around firstly whether he wanted to continue in the role and keep going.
"And then went through a feedback process from management and players and support staff - how supportive they are around that and gathering all that feedback came back undeniably that people were really supportive of Gary continuing and then we followed through on that process. There was strong feedback around Gary continuing, but there was also feedback around making sure we keep having fresh voices and ideas coming into the environment.
"I suppose the split coaching is one way of doing that, but when we weighed it all up we thought we could continue the good stuff Gary has brought to the side and the organisation, but also get the fresh ideas and so forth through other means, than just the split coaching," NZC's GM High Performance Bryan Stronach said.
New Zealand has also done well ever since Gary Stead took over the reins of the team. The Kiwis made it to the final of 2019 ODI World Cup only to lose it to England over boundary count rule. They made it to title clash of T20 World Cup 2021 as well but couldn't win the tournament again. Meanwhile, they managed to become the inaugural ICC World Test Champions by beating India in the final.
