Australia’s Champions Trophy campaign will be a litmus test for the National Selection Panel’s methods over the past few years.
For the first time in a long time the Aussies will be without their big three of Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc, along with the injured Mitchell Marsh and Cameron Green on top of last year’s retirement of David Warner and the more recent exit of Marcus Stoinis.
All of a sudden, Travis Head, Steve Smith, Adam Zampa and Glenn Maxwell are left with a squad of players yet to make their mark in the international arena, or borderline selections like Marnus Labuschagne and Sean Abbott for a tournament featuring the world’s top eight ODI teams.
If things go poorly for Australia in the Champions Trophy on the back of their back-to-back losses in Sri Lanka, then the selectors will face scrutiny due to their heavy reliance on the same nucleus of players in recent years across all three formats who are reaching the point of retirement from international cricket or cutting back on a format or two.
On the other hand, if Smith’s patched-up squad still manages to do well, it will be a sign that the doomsayers may not have it totally right when they say Australia is about to drop off a cliff, results wise, because the supporting cast is strong enough to get through the transition period.
For that to happen the likes of Inglis and Head will be crucial in the one-day arena. Head is the most explosive batter in either white-ball format and in 50-over matches in particular he has been brilliant, highlighted by his two centuries at the World Cup in India 15 months ago and a career-best 154 not out against England before the start of the recent home summer.
Inglis, who recently made his Test debut with a century at Galle, has the edge over Carey for the wicketkeeping duties in the white-ball teams. But Carey’s batting form has been brilliant of late, highlighted by his 156 in the second Test in Sri Lanka.
And both players deserve a spot not only as a specialist batter but in the top four in this squad.
The selectors have given Matt Short and Fraser McGurk plenty of chances to cement a spot at the top of the order over the past 12 months. But neither player has managed to produce the results to get them a start at the Champions Trophy.
This tournament is a smash-and-grab operation – three pool matches and if you don’t win at least two of the three, you could be on the next plane out of Pakistan.
Josh Inglis is dismissed. (Photo by Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images)
Australia’s squad is down to four reliable batters in this format – Smith, Head, Josh Inglis and Alex Carey.
Those four should form the top order at this tournament.
Maxwell, to be brutally honest, has rarely been a consistent performer throughout his ODI career even though he has always been an out-and-out match winner.
This is exemplified by the fact that after blasting 106, 41 and his unbeaten 201, one of the best, arguably the best white-ball knock of all time, at the 2023 World Cup, he has managed just 59 runs from his past nine trips to the crease.
He is averaging 7.375 and has been dismissed for seven or less on six of those occasions.
If the top four don’t fire, then the Aussies will be relying on the hot-and-cold Maxwell, Short, Labuschagne, Aaron Hardie and Fraser-McGurk to get runs, and none of them have been able to become reliable operators whether used in the top or middle order.
Fraser-McGurk has done little to show in his seven ODIs for Australia that he is up to international standard as yet, with a succession of low scores off few deliveries in tallying 98 runs at 14.
He lacks the temperament and the technique to do anything more than hit a few balls to the boundary before getting out.
On the bowling side of things, Zampa is one of the premier spin bowlers in white-ball cricket, but the pace attack is extremely green at this level.
Spencer Johnson has done well in limited chances in the T20 arena but he has a grand total of two wickets from three ODIs for Australia.
Nathan Ellis celebrates after taking the wicket of Maheesh Theekshana. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
Nathan Ellis has plenty of guile that has served him well in the short formats, while Sean Abbott and Ben Dwarshuis have been surplus to requirements for the national team for large parts of their career, but are now propelled into leading roles.
Tanveer Sangha has been selected as the back-up spinner, which is a further sign that the Aussies see him as a long-term white-ball option for the future as Zampa reaches the twilight of his career, but it also shows that they don’t place too much stock in the Champions Trophy.
And it’s hard to blame them for doing so, given that this is by far the least prestigious of the ICC global tournaments.
With a new Test and T20 trophy up for grabs every two years, on top of a one-day World Cup every four years, that means there are five world champions crowned in any given four-year cycle.
Australia have dominated the trophy collections in recent years, but it is entirely possible that over the next four-year cycle there will be as many as five different nations claiming world champion status.
It’s not just a symptom of cricket’s unusual position of having three major formats, but also indicative of the greed of the ICC executives that they need to roll out a T20 World Cup every two years in what is clearly a money grab.
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