Will Young (cricketer)

William Alexander Young (born 22 November 1992 in New Plymouth, New Zealand) is a professional cricketer who plays as a batsman for the Central Stags.

Young was captain of the New Zealand Under-19 cricket team at 2012 ICC Under-19 Cricket World Cup.[1]

In the 2011/12 New Zealand domestic cricket season he made his first-class debut for Central Districts and became the team's captain in December 2015 at just 23. Under his captaincy the Central Stags won the one-day Ford Trophy in 2016 and the first-class Plunket Shield unbeaten in 2018. Young then elected to step down from the captaincy to focus on his batting and making the New Zealand side.

In December 2018, he was named in New Zealand's Test squad for the series for the first time against Sri Lanka, but he did not play.[2]

In March 2019, Young was named to make his Test cricket debut one day before a Test match between New Zealand and Bangladesh was scheduled to begin at Hagley Oval. However, a terrorist attack in Christchurch on the same afternoon saw the match cancelled by New Zealand Cricket.

Despite not yet having played an international match for the New Zealand team, in May 2019 he was one of the twenty players awarded an annual NZC contract for the 2019–20 season by New Zealand Cricket.[3]

In May 2019, Young was going to be named as a reserve player for New Zealand in the 2019 Cricket World Cup, but made the decision to undergo shoulder surgery instead after an injury to his right labrum at a training camp.[4]

Despite his shoulder injury, Young scored back-to-back centuries for a New Zealand XI against Australia in a one-day warm-up series of three unofficial ODIs in Brisbane in May 2019. Young averaged more than 100 in the series with consecutive scores of 60, 130 and 111 against the defending Cricket World Cup champions.