Their attack has a distinctly Sheffield Shield flavour to it but the main thing in the two-times winners’ favour is the relative weakness of their groupFor a long time, a strange situation continued in Australian cricket. Through a one-day World Cup in 2023, through a T20 World Cup in 2024, through a Test summer that sat between them, and through the lead-ups and warm-ups before all of the above, the same three fast bowlers showed up almost all of the time. Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Patrick Cummins, in aeternum.Things don’t work that way. Fast bowling is a horrifically taxing art, and the mad operators who pursue it across any level of the game share a gruesome delight in cataloguing their lifetime’s injuries, discarding sneakers and peeling back socks and rolling up trouser legs to show you toes bent sideways or lurid half-moons of scars around ankles or knees. At the top level, fitness and availability are sporadic, and that’s before you come to the changes driven by each fo...
Australia's cricket team heads into the Champions Trophy without their key fast bowlers—Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, and Patrick Cummins—due to various commitments and injuries. The team will rely on less experienced bowlers like Spencer Johnson, Ben Dwarshuis, Sean Abbott, and Aaron Hardie, who primarily have domestic Sheffield Shield experience. This absence may make it easier for opposing teams to score runs, but Australia's relatively weaker group in the tournament could offer an advantage. The team will likely depend on strong batting performances from players such as Travis Head, Glenn Maxwell, and Jake Fraser-McGurk to compensate.
