Today’s one-off match against England at Cardiff could appear to be just another throw away T20 match. But, with only just over six months to the World Twenty20, it is a rare chance for Australia to test out their line-up.
AUSTRALIA VS ENGLAND T20 FULL SCOREBOARD
While the Big Bash League now dominates the domestic season, the national T20 side doesn’t get many outings.
Between now and the World Cup in India, Australia have only seven scheduled T20 matches.
While more could be added in the lead up to the tournament it does not offer the selectors much time to decide upon their favoured 11-12 players or for that group to jell.
For a nation which has been the dominant ODI team in world cricket for most of the past 20 years, Australia’s record in T20 is ordinary.
Part of this problem stems from the fact that for years they treated the format as a novelty – players were mic’d up on field, tactics were rubbery and entertainment trumped endeavor.
Along with New Zealand and South Africa, Australia are the only major nations yet to have won the World T20, with the five tournaments having been won by as many different teams.
You get the sense that this now stings the Australians, many of whom like star batsmen Steve Smith and David Warner owe a lot to T20.
Australia long have had the players to be a potent T20 outfit. Their ranks are littered with punishing, innovative and versatile batsmen, swift and skilful pacemen, and agile fieldsman.
The one obvious weakness has been their lack of match-winning spinners. Many of the most effective spinners in T20 cricket have been slow bowlers.
Several have been those types who hide their bowling arm beneath long sleeves while toying with the already generous 15-degrees of flex rule for bowlers.
Australian coaches at all levels tend to favour traditional techniques which may go some way to explaining why so far no such law-bending, game-changing tweaker has emerged.
But Australia would happily settle for a plain old effective slow bowler – one who can at least produce the odd brilliant over.
This is particularly pertinent given the venue for the upcoming World Cup. Left armer Xavier Doherty was never going to be such a player and Australia finally appeared to have moved on from him in all formats.
Selected in the limited overs squad for this Ashes tour, young spinners Cameron Boyce and Ashton Agar appear to be the frontrunners for the World T20.
The selectors seem so determined to keep Nathan Lyon’s focus solely on Test cricket that they are ignoring his considerable skills in the shorter formats.
Regardless, Boyce and Agar are better equipped to shifting the momentum of a T20 International than Doherty.
Agar’s languid batting offers him a hefty advantage over Boyce. It should not, however, distract from his blossoming orthodox bowling.
The 21-year-old imparts robust revolutions on his deliveries, prompting them to loop, drift and turn appreciably. Meanwhile, his 6’3 frame allows him to extract decent bounce from most surfaces.
Boyce may offer less with the bat and in the field, but he is the most attacking spinner in the land.
The 26-year-old Queenslander focuses more on ripping the ball as hard as he can, and less on landing his deliveries on a perfect spot.
He will offer the odd rank delivery which will be dispatched to or over the boundary. In between, though, there will be offerings which fizz through the air, dipping alarmingly on the batsman before exploding from the turf.
With Glenn Maxwell’s off spin proving increasingly effective, there is likely room for only one specialist tweaker in Australia’s T20 line-up, even in the spin-friendly environment of India.
For Australia to lift the T20 World Cup on the subcontinent, it seems certain that this frontline spinner will need to shine.
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