Marsh backs Australia’s inexperienced bowling attack to do the job
Australia skipper Mitchell Marsh is confident that his side’s relatively inexperienced bowling attack will rise to the challenge in the absence of frontline pacers Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood during the T20 World Cup. This will be the first major ICC tournament since 2016 where Australia will not feature a single member of their famed pace trio. While Starc retired from the format last year, Cummins and Hazlewood have been ruled out of the tournament due to injuries. In their absence Nathan Ellis, Ben Dwarshius and Xavier Bartlett will spearhead the pace department.
“Guys like Patty (Cummins) have played a lot for us over the last few years due to his hectic schedule and over the last 12 months guys like Benny Dwarshuis and Xavier Bartlett have played pretty much all of our games,” Marsh said on the eve of their opening game against Ireland. “We’ve got great confidence that they’ve been able to do a role for us, and they’ve excelled in some games. So we’re confident with the group that we’ve got here. And we’ve built that for the last 12 months.”
Australia head into the tournament on the back of a historic 0-3 T20I series loss to Pakistan, which included their heaviest defeat in the format - a 111-run drubbing. “It (Pakistan tour) was some great learnings from that tour. We had some young guys that got exposed to those conditions for probably the first time in their career. “We take the lessons and we move on and we obviously welcome some experienced guys back into our group for this part for this tournament so yeah we’ve certainly parked that and we move on and we look forward to the World Cup,” Marsh said.
Australian batters struggled against spin during the Pakistan tour, and Marsh admitted that the team needs to adapt quickly, especially with Sri Lankan conditions expected to favour slower bowlers. “We certainly know the conditions that we’re going to be faced with and I think most teams will have, I guess, similar ideas on how they’re going to go about it. So we’re prepared for that and we’re ready to go,” he said.
“Look, I think we certainly want to be positive in the way we go about things. I think in these conditions, it’s just about being really clear on how you’re going to go about it and playing what’s in front of you,” Marsh said ahead of Australia’s T20 World Cup opener against Ireland.
“The word adaptability has been thrown around in our team meetings so far and just adapt to whatever situation is put in front of us and get the job done,” he added. Marsh confirmed that Tim David will miss Australia’s tournament opener as he continues to recover from a hamstring injury. “He’s not available tomorrow, but we’ll certainly see him come back into contention over the next few games,” Marsh said.
