T20 World Cup: Mitchell Marsh bracing to start campaign without Hazlewood

An Australia team in a mega event without a single member of the fast bowling troika of Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc is a tough proposition – but captain Mitchell Marsh is bracing up for it during their campaign in the ICC T20 World Cup. The 2021 champions, who are playing a warm-up game against Netherlands on Thursday, get some time to acclimatise to the conditions in Sri Lanka before they launch their campaign against Ireland on 11 February.

 It was at the eleventh hour when news broke that the 35-year-old Hazlewood, who missed out on the Ashes after developing an Achilles injury, would be left at home for the early part of the tournament for further recovery.

Sean Abbott has been added to the squad as a travelling reserve – adding to the yellow shirts’ troubled build-up after they were whipped   3-0 in a recent T20I series by Pakistan.

Speaking in the Captains Day in Colombo, Marsh tried to shrug it off before the media: ‘’I think we’ve got a lot of bases covered with our squad. One of the great things about Pat and Josh especially, being all three format players, is that we’ve been able to build a lot of depth within our squad and the guys that have come in have played a lot of cricket for our group.

‘’So we’ve got a lot of confidence in them to go out there and do the job when required and then we’ll just pick teams based on the conditions. Matthew Kuhnemann has been great for us. We’ve also got Adam Zampa and then we’ve got a few spinning allrounders, like most teams will. So I think we’ve got all bases covered and now it’s just about getting stuck into it,’’ said Marsh, hinting at adapting to the conditions at hand rather than the Aussie brand of cricket.

 A clean sweep at the hands of Pakistan was certainly not an ideal preparation for the cricketing powerhouse, but the 34-year-old captain and allrounder was ready to  move on.

‘’Yeah, look, Pakistan was Pakistan. We had a few guys missing and we come here with a long lead-in, a good training session yesterday. Practice game tonight and then a long build-in to our game. So we will be very well prepared for our first game,’’ he said.

 A ticket to the Super 8 stage is meant should be easy for Australia from Group B, but it’s an intriguing group which has Sri Lanka – a different beast at home, Ireland who have often pulled off a surprise in the past and the spunky Sikander Raza leading Zimbabwe. The fifth team in the group is Oman, the Gulf state, a squad full of Indian and Pakistan diaspora.

 ‘’Yeah, we’ve got great respect for all the teams that we’re going to be playing against. We’ll be as consistent as we can with our preparation and how we go about things. Over the last 18 months, I feel we’ve been one of the most consistent sides in the world. We come to this World Cup really confident, knowing that conditions will be different at times. But we've got guys who have experienced that all over the world. So we look forward to the challenge of playing against everyone.’’