New Delhi, Jan 13 Australia chief selector George Bailey has admitted that he doesn’t have much idea about the availability of Pat Cummins for the upcoming Champions Trophy, especially after undergoing scans on his ankle.
Cummins, who is missing out on Australia’s upcoming two-match Test series against Sri Lanka due to the birth of his second child, recently went for scans over an ankle problem he was managing while leading Australia to a 3-1 series win over India earlier this month.
While Cummins has been named as Australia’s captain in the preliminary 15-man squad for the eight-team tournament starting on February 19, teams are allowed to make a change to their teams a week before their first match.
“I don’t really have any more information than what I shared when we were announcing the Test squad a few days ago. I believe (Cummins) has had the scan, but I wanted to give him a little bit of space at the back end of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and obviously baby pending.”
“We’ll work through that in good time. I’ve got no idea what the scan has said or what it showed. I know he’s very keen, so we’ll work through that. That’s always the challenge with the ICC requirements in terms of naming your squad this far out. I don’t have a date for you in terms of a hard timeline,” Bailey told reporters after announcing Australia’s squad on Monday.
All-rounder and T20I captain Mitchell Marsh looms as the stand-in captain if Cummins’ misses the Champions Trophy. Another big call Australia made was to leave out young opener Jake-Fraser McGurk, who has struggled to get big runs at international and domestic levels.
In place of him, Australia have included Matt Short. “As far as Jake goes, I think he’s still very young. We know that’s going to be a journey. The skill set is still incredibly exciting. We’ve got plenty of top order batters in the mix there.”
“It is a pretty preliminary squad. There will be opportunities to move should anyone get hit with injury or we need to change the balance of that for some reason in the lead-up,” added Bailey.
Australia have a plethora of all-round options in Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis, and Aaron Hardie, while Nathan Ellis was selected ahead of Sean Abbott in the fast-bowling department. Australia, who last won Champions Trophy in 2009, are in Group B alongside England, South Africa and Afghanistan.
“I think Sean’s been the beneficiary through his robustness and ability to be fit on the park. He’s had some opportunities in some of the one-day squads, when some other guys haven’t quite been there. In this sort of lineup, with the four quicks that we’ve gone with, we just feel like that was the best balance for this particular tournament,” concluded Bailey.
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