Australia ready to finalising squad for Men’s T20WC
Still months away from the scheduled start of the ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2020, Australia's team has taken a concrete shape with the exception of the "last one or two postions", according to chairman of selectors Trevor Hohns
Still months away from the scheduled start of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2020, Australia’s team has taken a concrete shape with the exception of the “last one or two postions”, according to chairman of selectors Trevor Hohns.
Australia have enjoyed a glorious run in the T20I format recently. They have won nine out of their last 10 completed T20Is across series against India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and South Africa.
The consequence of such strong showing is that, despite international cricket currently being on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the squad is more or less settled upon.
“The last one or two positions always give us a headache normally. Particularly when you’ve got a settled line-up that has performed very well over the last 12 months,” Hohns told reporters.
“We’d be very close (to finalising a squad). If we had to, we could probably just about nominate it now.”
The Australian Test and ODI teams have benefitted from the meteoric rise of Marnus Labuschagne in recent months, but he hasn’t yet had a chance to prove his worth in the shortest format. Will the hosts be tempted to play him in the T20 World Cup? Hohns indicated that Australia are keeping their options open, but aren’t inclined towards rushing the 25-year-old into the T20I outfit.
“We don’t want to go too far with him yet. He works so hard, he’s now playing Test cricket and one-day cricket,” Hohns said. “That’s happened in a short period of time. We don’t want to overburden but there’s no reason why a player like that can’t play T20 cricket.
“At the moment it’s in his court and we have a pretty good T20 side or squad … they’re the ones we’ll be focusing on, looking forward to the World Cup.”
