Due to a super quick turnaround from the end of IPL 2022 with Kolkata Knight Riders, premier Australian fast-bowler Pat Cummins will be skipping the T20I series part of the national side’s all-format visit to Sri Lanka. While the Premier League concludes on May 29, the three-match T20I series begins June 7.
Cummins, however, will be available for the ODI and Test leg of Australian men’s first visit to the island nation since 2016, when they won the ODIs and T20Is but were hammered 3-0 in the Test matches. The ODI series will be a proper five-match affair, but the Test bout is limited to only two games, both part of the ICC World Test Championship 2021-23.
Apart from their international fixtures, the Australian selectors have added a short but critical A tour to their itinerary for Sri Lanka. In the build-up to the Test series, A team players will take on a Sri Lankan representative side in two 50-over games and two first-class encounters while the main stars simultaneously take part in the limited-overs section of their five-week tour.
Opening batter Marcus Harris and fast-bowler Mark Steketee are the only faces not retained in the Test squad from Australia’s historic 1-0 triumph on their first tour to Pakistan in 24 years this March, although both will have the chance to strengthen their cases via the A series.
In a sign that world cricket sits on the heels of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Cummins-led Test squad features only 16 members. While there is an option for George Bailey and his team to bring in quick replacements from the A side, the chairman of selectors feels it is good to have a downsized squad and more certainty around their playing XI.
“We have the ability to do that on an as-needed basis as opposed to trying to sort of crystal ball what you might need and announcing a squad of 20 which we’ve had to live last couple of years so I think that’s that’s great for all the players,”
Bailey was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.
Australia’s selector Bailey was also pleased to have in place Australia’s strongest possible limited-overs squad, especially for the ODI series, after all of Cummins, his pace partners Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc, as well as Steven Smith, David Warner, Glenn Maxwell, Mitchell Marsh and Matthew Wade missed the white-ball leg in Pakistan. Among these stars, Wade is only part of the T20Is, as are Jhye Richardson and Kane Richardson.
The only player integral to Australia’s first-choice limited-overs team missing from the entire white-ball leg is wristspinner Adam Zampa, who will skip the tour due to the impending birth of his first child.
There is a surprise omission of Ben McDermott, who impressed with a hundred and a fifty in the ODIs against Pakistan. He, however, has been included in the A squad, which has been picked primarily with Australia’s Test match fortunes in mind.
McDermott finds himself behind Peter Handscomb, Matt Renshaw and Nic Maddinson in the red-ball batting hierarchy. Another player behind in the pecking order, quite interestingly so, is pacer Michael Neser, who made his Test debut in Adelaide during the summer’s Ashes.
He is not even in the A team, as the selectors have opted for him to continue undergoing his county stint with Glamorgan after missing the Pakistan series due to injury. The idea partly is to aid Neser’s preparations for the Ashes tour to England next year.
