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In the last World T20, Australia relied on pace in spin-friendly conditions and it backfired spectacularly. Now, with their fast-bowling stocks decimated, they must learn from this mistake and bank on spin in India.
A spate of injuries has robbed Australia of their best four T20 pacemen – Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Nathan Coulter-Nile and Jason Behrendorff. Picking a pace-heavy attack from the limited seamers available would be folly on Indian grounds, with their dead pitches and short boundaries.
The leading sides in the T20 World Cup will be building their attacks around spin, and so should Australia by picking two specialist tweakers in their XI from the start of the tournament.
Spinners rule the roost in T20, particularly in Asia where the ball does not come on to the bat. The top five bowlers in the ICC T20 rankings all are tweakers – West Indian leggie Samuel Badree, Indian off spinner Ravi Ashwin, Pakistan all-rounder Shahid Afridi, Sri Lankan finger spinner Sacithra Senanayake and Zimbabwean wrist spinner Graeme Cremer.
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What’s more, spinners accounted for four of the top five leading wicket-takers in the last World T20, which was played in Bangladesh on parched surfaces very similar to what we’ll see in India in March and April.
Yet in that last World T20, Australia refused to tailor their attack to the conditions, never once fielding two specialist spinners in their side, as they lost three of their four games and crashed to an early exit.
In their first match of that World T20, their opponents, Pakistan, played four spinners, while Australia’s first four bowlers used all were quicks. Next up, West Indian spinners Badree, Sunil Narine and Marlon Samuels combined to take 6-76 against an Australia side which leaned heavily on four seamers in Starc, Doug Bollinger, James Faulkner and Shane Watson.
In their third match, Australia appeared to belatedly recognise the importance of spin on slow, turning decks. They opened the bowling with part-time offies Brad Hodge and Glenn Maxwell against India. Between them, Hodge, Maxwell and leggie James Muirhead returned the good figures of 3-57 while conceding only seven runs per over.
So, after the success of their spinners in this match, what did Australia do in their final fixture against Bangladesh? Well, of course, they decided not to even pick a specialist spinner and dedicate 17 of their 20 overs to pace.
Australia won that match by seven wickets. Perhaps the selectors felt they had been vindicated by finally ditching those pesky tweakers and instead feeding their need for speed.
Australia at least had quality pace options to choose from in that tournament, with Starc, Coulter-Nile and Bollinger all fine international bowlers. If Australia currently had a full complement available then it would be somewhat understandable if they gambled on pace in the upcoming World T20. Starc, Cummins and Coulter-Nile are dynamic bowlers capable of turning a match with a burst of brilliance.
With all due respect, the same cannot be said of the likes of Scott Boland, Andrew Tye, John Hastings and Kane Richardson. Australia are hoping that Shaun Tait can be that kind of impact bowler, but he was awful in his two T20 matches against India this past week, taking 0-91 from eight overs.
With his unusual action and express pace, Tait may be able to rattle some of the lesser sides. The ease with which the Indians played him, though, suggests he could be a liability against the stronger batting line-ups.
Cruelling Tait’s chances of selection are the fact that he is poor both in the field and with the bat. To justify his position in Australia’s starting XI he needs to be bowling the house down and instead he sprayed the ball all over the pitch against India.
Australia need to come to peace with the fact that they will not be able to bully teams with pace in this tournament. Instead, they need to invest in spinners plus seamers who are clever, accurate and boast variation – a set of attributes only Shane Watson displayed against India.
Watson was Australia’s standout bowler, alongside leg-spinner Cameron Boyce. On Sunday, Boyce was faced with the nightmare scenario of coming on to bowl with the score 1-74 after seven overs against the rampantly in-form pair of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.
Undaunted, Boyce did not give in to the temptation to try to dart his deliveries in the hope he might sneak through his overs without getting spanked. Instead, he took on Kohli and Sharma, bowling with tantalising loop and getting significant drift which deceived both batsmen, resulting in their downfall.
It was a brave and wonderfully skilful display from the 26-year-old wrist spinner, who has been excellent his brief T20 career. In his seven international matches Boyce has snared eight wickets at 19 and, crucially, has conceded a miserly 6.6 runs per over.
He should be a lock for the World T20. And if the selectors have paid any attention to the history of the T20 format, Boyce should operate in tandem with another frontline spinner.
That could be either Test regular Nathan Lyon, young gun Adam Zampa, or even left-armer Steve O’Keefe, whose low-slung, accurate bowling is similar to India’s Ravi Jadeja.