“Yeah, very confident,” Stead said of Williamson’s availability for the first Test against England. “I mean at a push we could have got him over here [in India] immediately, but considering I guess the travel factor and making sure that you can actually recover properly when you get here, we didn’t feel though that was worth the risk. So we’re happy with having him ready and very, very confident he’ll be right for that first Test versus England.”
“We’ve adapted well without him here. The best thing for Kane is just to get himself completely right for England and we’re certainly looking forward to him coming back and hopefully making a difference in that Test series over there for us.”
Ben Sears likely to miss England Test series with injury
“Unlikely to be available for the England Test series,” Stead said of Sears. “Ben is going in for a small surgery today and just on his knee. Hopefully then he’ll be able to recover in the near future. I’m very hopeful he’ll be part of the summer.
“It’s not a big operation – he just needs a little bit of tidy up on his knee – so like hopefully by Christmas or so he’ll be back up and running again.”
Stead hopes for a repeat of WTC 2021
“Yeah I mean a series win in itself is incredible but what we want to do is keep trying to get better every game and we’re going to different circumstances now – the red clay [in Mumbai] is very different,” Stead said. “The way that it performs is different, so we’re going to have to adapt quickly and our next two trainings are going to be important, but for the World Test Championship itself there’s no doubt that one more win here would certainly help us.
“I remember the first time we were in the situation of qualifying for the first WTC, we had to win four Tests on the bounce and managed to. So, hopefully there’s some sort of similes to that that we can lean on and say, ‘Well, we’ve done it before, here’s an opportunity to perhaps do something very special again’.”