In England as the World Cup’s opening day finally pulls into view, there’s a very strong narrative about Australia “peaking at the right time”. That’s presumably being replicated in Australian media outlets. To English minds, recent history is irrelevant because Australians are born knowing how to win. Australian minds don’t tend to disagree.
Talking up Australia is understandable to a degree, given they beat England and swept aside Sri Lanka in two World Cup warm-ups, after winning their last eight one-day internationals on the trot. But flip the viewpoint and the warm-ups have raised more questions than provided answers.
This is certainly a happier and better functioning Australian team than the version that could barely win a game over the previous couple of years. There will be some wins in store. But to best the rest of the world week after week, this side has some problems.
The bowling is the strong suit. Mitchell Starc has barely played an ODI in a year and a half due to the physical toll of his Test outings, but he’s had several months of rest and looked like he was back to full pace in his one Southampton warm-up.
Patrick Cummins right now could take wickets bowling on fused black glass. He’s fast, accurate, bowls at the body when it suits, and moves the ball off the seam. Nathan Coulter-Nile has been no less impressive lately, while among the back-ups Jason Behrendorff has left-arm swing and awkward bounce, and Kane Richardson has a raft of variations and a handsome beard.
Nathan Lyon with his off-breaks has done a wonderful job of controlling the pace through the middle of an innings on the recent tours against India and Pakistan, and backed this up in the warm-up against England with 1 for 37 from his 10 overs against the biggest hitters in the business. Adam Zampa’s leg-spin has flourished in recent times as he’s been backed for a position in the side.
But the fifth bowler is where the issues begin. Marcus Stoinis does the job well with his medium pace, but has had a horrible year and more with the bat. A player who announced his entry to ODI cricket with a devastating display of six-hitting in 2017 has more batted like an arthritis case study. Coming in later in innings, he’s neither been able to rotate strike nor consistently find the fence. The way Stoinis has batted then clogs up the innings for everyone else.
Australia’s spare players in the squad of 15 are two quicks, one spinner and one batsman. There is no spare all-rounder. Glenn Maxwell can bowl his share of off-spin, but especially on flatter pitches early in the tournament he can’t be expected to do wonders. In short this means Stoinis can’t be dropped, unless Australia backs Coulter-Nile to bat at seven.
This exposes the next shortcoming in Australia’s squad, which is the lack of power-hitting. Maxwell has the second-best strike rate in ODI history, smashing on average 122 runs per 100 balls, and often much faster when he gets going. Wicketkeeper Alex Carey has had some fast cameos but has never passed 50 for Australia.
But Aaron Finch at the top of the order has slowed down his scoring rate to negotiate his way out of a form slump, while David Warner has tempered his own approach as his career has gone on. Nor do we know for sure that those two will open the batting, because Usman Khawaja has made a million runs doing that job in Warner’s absence. But Warner and Finch have never batted anywhere else in ODIs, while Khawaja has a terrible record when he does.
If you push the latter down into the middle order, you realise that Khawaja, Steve Smith and Shaun Marsh are all basically variations of the same player: the strokemaker and accumulator who might score you a hundred off 95 balls. That’s the kind of player you build a one-day innings around, like New Zealand with Kane Williamson or England with Joe Root. But it’s not the kind of player you have more than once.
So Australia has either picked three openers or three lynchpins, along with one genuinely attacking batsman. There is no configuration in which this batting order works. A player like Ashton Turner or James Faulkner could have changed the balance, but only injury can make a necessary selection possible.
One-day cricket has changed vastly in just a few years. When the chance is there, teams need striking power to turn big scores like 280 into huge scores like 350. A great bowling attack and intensity in the field can defend 280 a fair amount of the time, but it probably won’t be often enough to win a trophy.
In England, people have to talk up Australia’s chances because they can’t imagine a World Cup that Australia might not win. That’s the cricket world order as it is broadly understood. But each team out of England, South Africa, West Indies, India, New Zealand, and probably even Pakistan has more hitting power down through the order. If these Australians are able to support an English thesis that they somehow possess winning DNA, it will only be because they’ve found a way to exceed those limitations.
