Mitchell Santner, New Zealand‘s white-ball captain, has said that his ambition to feature in Test matches against India and Australia was a key reason behind him declining a lucrative offer to give up his central contract to join the BBL.

The approach by Adelaide Strikers, who recently signed Ben Stokes, was first reported by News Corp. It would have been a two-year deal, with Santner conceding the “offer was good”, but the lure of Test cricket and a desire to keep the limited-overs captaincy was enough to sway his decision.

“When you look ahead to the summer we’ve got, India here for white ball and Tests and Australia away – there’s not many bigger than that – it’s quite an exciting time,” Santner told the New Zealand Herald. “I’d like to still be part of that.”

“The offer was good, I’m not going to lie. They knew it would have to be a good offer for me to entertain it with contracting and what would come up. I did entertain the thought of it, but coming back to what we’ve got coming up, even if I’m not going to play every game of Test cricket, I still feel like there’s a role for me.”

Santner has been New Zealand’s ODI and T20I captain since late 2024 and under him the side has reached the finals of the Champions Trophy and T20 World Cup. There had been early conversations about how he could have retained the captaincy on a casual contract, but he said that wouldn’t have felt right.

“I don’t want to give up captaincy,” he said. “If that was part of the deal, it was a no brainer for me. There were chats that it could have worked. But for me, sitting without a central contract and trying to captain, I don’t know if that would sit right at this stage.”

Part of the NZC central contract agreement is that players need to be available for the Super Smash which takes in place in January, currently overlapping with both the BBL and SA20.

NZC has taken a pragmatic approach to the evolving global landscape of international and franchise cricket, aware they can’t match the money available in various T20 leagues, by offering a casual playing agreement to a number of players over recent years.

Mark Chapman is the most recent to have taken that route with a BBL deal set to be confirmed soon, and joins Finn Allen, Tim Seifert, Lockie Ferguson and Adam Milne in that arrangement.

The situation will likely change for New Zealand players next year with the launch of NZ20 which will replace the Super Smash.