New Zealand Cricket Chief Executive Officer David White says he has faith in the BLACKCAPS management and the team itself.
“Let’s give them the space now to improve their performance and prove themselves to the public.”
In response to news stories regarding the Shane Bond report to New Zealand Cricket in December White says, “At that time we canvassed all of the BLACKCAPS team management about their views of what happened during the events surrounding the change of captaincy.”
“Shane Bond was one of several team managers who reported back to us his impressions of what occurred and we appreciated his input.”
“Unfortunately his report was received by NZC late in the evening prior to the planned press conference scheduled for the following day and was the ‘additional material’ referred to by Chairman Chris Moller. We believed the content of Shane’s report to us merited further investigation over a longer period and we made extensive inquiries of team management.”
“We found considerable variance with Shane’s account in the assessments given to us by the other members of the senior management team.”
“After much investigation NZC’s final conclusion is that the problems that arose over the captaincy issue were the result of misunderstanding and poor communication between the parties involved.”
“The important thing to recognise is that Shane wasn’t in the room at the time that the captaincy discussions were taking place. However, we have heard his concerns and have discussed them with him and the team management. Both Shane and NZC have now amicably resolved the issue.”
“In regard to the split captaincy argument my greatest regret is that Mike Hesson and myself, on separate occasions, offered Ross Taylor a split captaincy role where he would captain the Test team but that Ross felt he was unable to accept the offer,” says White.
“We have apologised to Ross Taylor for the way in which the matter was handled and NZC has publicly pledged to learn from what happened and ensure nothing like this will occur again.”
“At this point it now serves no useful purpose for NZC to dwell on who may have said what to whom or make any further comment on such speculation. We need to concentrate on the three remaining ODIs in South Africa and the challenging tour by England next month. It is vital New Zealand Cricket now looks forwards not backwards.”
