Mitchell Santner, New Zealand’s captain in white-ball cricket, is expected to miss action for “at least a month” after medical scans identified a grade three ACL shoulder injury.
Santner, 34, returned to New Zealand earlier this week from IPL 2026, where he featured for Mumbai Indians (MI). New Zealand Cricket (NZC) said he met a specialist on Friday morning, who confirmed that he would require a rest and rehabilitation spell of at least one month.
The injury occurred to Santner’s left shoulder while he was fielding for MI during the match against Chennai Super Kings (CSK) on April 23. It was his fourth outing for Mumbai after he had joined the squad later than most, having previously asked the team management for “slightly extended time [off] for personal reasons” at the end of the T20 World Cup. Against CSK, Santner completed his full allocation of overs, finishing with figures of 1 for 44, though he did not bat. Shardul Thakur took his place in the batting order.
NZC stated that the findings rule Santner out of the one-off Test versus Ireland in late May and the opening Test against England at Lord’s in early June. His participation in the second and third Tests will be assessed later. The selection for the Ireland and England Test series will be announced “in the coming days”.
As Santner’s IPL schedule overlapped with New Zealand’s commitments, he missed the ongoing white-ball tour of Bangladesh.
MI signed Santner for INR 2 crore ahead of IPL 2025 and then retained him for this season. In IPL 2025, he played 13 matches and finished with 10 wickets at an economy rate of 7.92. More recently, he captained New Zealand to the T20 World Cup final, where they were beaten by India. Santner contributed 120 runs across the tournament at a strike rate of 142.85, and he also claimed two wickets with his left-arm spin. For MI in IPL 2026, he scored 26 runs across two innings at a strike rate of 136.84 and took five wickets, conceding at an economy rate of 8.92.
Even if Santner misses the four Tests scheduled across May and June, he is still expected to return to lead New Zealand during the ODI and T20I series in the West Indies in July.
