Melbourne, May 27: Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 has delayed joining of some key Australian players for the upcoming ICC Men's T20 World Cup in the West Indies and the USA with their team members.
Interestingly at the same time, majority of the 15-men Indian team have already left for the World Cup. Because excluding Rinku Singh, the Kolkata Knight Riders star, who is a travelling reserve for Indian team, none of the Indian team's T20 World Cup squad members did feature in the Sunday night IPL Final in Chennai.
On the contrary, Australia are facing a dearth of players for the T20 World Cup warm-up matches as squad members participating in the IPL will spend some time with family before joining the team in the Caribbean.
Australia are scheduled to play warm-up matches against Namibia on Tuesday and co-host West Indies on Thursday. They have only nine players available for the first warm-up match with captain Mitchell Marsh solely playing as a batter in the encounter.
The trio of Pat Cummins, Travis Head and Mitchell Starc were part of the IPL final in Chennai on Sunday and will spend a brief period with family before linking up with the World Cup squad.
Among those spending time at home are Glenn Maxwell and Cameron Green, who were part of Royal Challengers Bengaluru's playoff run. When the Australian team travels to Barbados in preparation for their opening group game against Oman on June 5, those five are expected to arrive. Marcus Stoinis has yet to arrive in the Caribbean.
"It's important to be flexible. Guys have been at the IPL. They've been playing a lot of cricket so we've prioritized giving them a couple of days at home, see their family, refresh and play the long game for this tournament. We'll get to our 15 eventually but it's really important that we give them a break, even if it's [just] a couple of days at home," cricket.com.au quoted Marsh as saying.
In the absence of required players, Australia will have the option to field coaching staff members during the warm-up matches. In addition to head coach Andrew McDonald, national selector George Bailey, and assistant coach Andre Borovec, Brad Hodge has joined the tournament support staff and could be called in.
Marsh is confident of his leadership abilities in his first ICC assignment as captain. He is still recovering from the hamstring injury suffered during the IPL with Delhi Capitals.
"I'm just ticking off the last few things I need to tick off to be fit and available. All went well today. It's been progressively slow but finally getting there now and looking forward to getting stuck into the tournament," he said.
"Initially we thought it was a three-week time but with tendons they can take a little bit longer and you sort of have to go on feel. Once I was ruled out of the IPL we've certainly taken our time to get it right and I feel lucky I've had that bit of extra time, a little bit of time at home to refresh and like all the others who have arrived today I'm raring to go," Marsh added.
India and Australia have played two finals of ICC multination global tournaments (ODI World Cup 2023 and World Test Championships) in recent times and Aussies have won convincingly on both the occasions.
India will definitely look forward to settle old scores with the Aussies in ICC Men's World Cup 2024, which start from June 1. But at this juncture, from preparations to match practices, the Australians seem to be way ahead of other teams including India. (With IANS support)
