With a Twenty20 World Cup on home soil less than a year away, it is interesting that the Australian men’s team will sail into 2019 with a 50-over team that looks much closer to the Test line-up than a 20-over outfit. Few of the tyros of the Big Bash are there: instead they will be back home playing in that T20 tournament while the one-day team makes a lightning trip to the subcontinent for three matches at India’s insistence.
Steve Smith and David Warner are the pair that would be present in any format. Alongside them in the one-day squad sits the Test pace attack of Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, while chairman of selectors Trevor Hohns says that Test spinner Nathan Lyon “remains in the one-day squad selection frame”. Marnus Labuschagne makes the squad after three Test hundreds this summer, without having played much short-form cricket even domestically.
This fits with the moderate approach that coach Justin Langer took into the 50-over World Cup earlier this year, shifting 50-over cricket closer to a shortened Test than an elongated T20. Australia had previously tried to mimic the current English style of blasting from start to finish, and had come a cropper, with T20 strikers like Chris Lynn and D’Arcy Short not able to find their stride. The focus shifted back to solid scores and excellent bowling, and the method immediately felt more natural for that group of players.
Unlucky in that context to miss out on the current square is Usman Khawaja, whose previous one-day visit to India only nine months ago yielded scores of 50, 38, 104, 91 and 100. His partnership with Aaron Finch was outstanding, but even it couldn’t rival the years of big scores that Finch had made with Warner, so Warner’s return pushed Khawaja out of the opening spot and he never quite regained his stride.
It was also a tough drop for Shaun Marsh, fifth on the runs list to Khawaja’s fourth in the recent domestic one-day cup, and who just made a century to win the final for Western Australia. Marsh had a streak of four tons in eight innings before the World Cup, but was displaced by Khawaja’s move down the order and then had his wrist broken by Starc in the nets. Age has counted against him as selectors look to four years down the road.
Accordingly, there is a player squeezed out who will make a return in Peter Handscomb, who was excellent before the World Cup but had to make way for Smith. The two play similar roles, working the strike against spin through the middle overs before accelerating towards the end, but Handscomb has enough upper gears to complement Smith in the middle order. He’ll also see a chance to put his name forward for the Test side again after a couple of abortive attempts.
The other notable outs from the World Cup are all-rounders Marcus Stoinis, who had battled with the bat since well before that tournament but is getting back to his best domestically, and Glenn Maxwell, who took a mental health break from the Australian T20 team in November after being worn out by touring. Giving Maxwell a pass on this India trip is the right move, so he can stay closer to home playing for the Melbourne Stars. But everything needs to be done to make sure Australia’s fastest scorer is right for the T20 World Cup next October.
Taking their places are the two Ashtons, Turner and Agar, both all-rounders of the spin variety who will boost bowling options on Asian decks. Turner can think back to his match-winning half-century for Australia in Mohali in March, rather than the run of ducks he made in the Indian Premier League to follow it.
Wicketkeeper Alex Carey will look to back up his breakthrough World Cup, where he impressed with his cool head and clean striking down the order whenever he was required. Adam Zampa is the specialist spin option, Kane Richardson and Sean Abbott the back-up bowlers. These last five are the names most closely associated with the Big Bash, where others have spent more of their recent summers on international duties.
Still, perhaps the lack of T20 players is also a tactical consideration. With that T20 World Cup on the horizon, and all to be played on home pitches, those who might participate could well be better off playing an uninterrupted season in Australia of the shortest format, rather than switching their minds and games and timezones around to play a different game on foreign shores. As we move closer to the self-labelled Big Dance itself, it will be interesting to see if these different parts of the cricketing spectrum find a way to mesh.
