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Currently, Australia occupy number one rankings in Test cricket and ODIs. But in T20 internationals they are way down at number eight.
After a meaningless two T20s in South Africa on March 4 and 6, Australia tours India to take part in the sixth ICC World T20.
A championship victory over there this March-April will see them climb higher in the Twenty20 rankings and they could capture the top spot in the near future.
That would be the ultimate, wearing the triple-crown.
Selectors made a good choice in appointing Steven Smith as the captain of the team for the World T20 team. Resting him and having Aaron Finch and Shane Watson as captains was the reason Australia lost 0-3 recently to India in the T20 series in Australia.
To have 24-year-old leg-break googly bowler Adam Zampa is a wise choice but not at the expense of the tried and tested Nathan Lyon.
The omission of batsman George Bailey also came as a surprise to me.
Otherwise, the team is sound with hard-hitting openers Warner and Finch, middle-order smashers Usman Khawaja, Smith and Watson and all-rounders Mitchell Marsh, James Faulkner and Glenn Maxwell, who can mutate from a right-handed to a left-handed batsman with a quick flick of the wrist.
Peter Nevill has proved himself as the best wicket-keeper in all three forms of the game.
Although the injured Mitchell Starc will be missed, the squad has enough quickies – Josh Hazlewood, Nathan Coulter-Nile, John Hastings and Andrew Tye – to grab wickets.
I predict that Hastings will be the most successful bowler.
As the matches will be played in India one more spinner should have been included apart from Zampa and Ashton Agar. Lyon will be missed.
Smith will have to turn his arm over much more than he does Down Under.
Australia are in Group 2 along with the tournament favourites India and other strong teams New Zealand and Pakistan.
Group 1 includes South Africa, England, Sri Lanka and West Indies.
For their first match, Australia meet New Zealand at Dharamsala on March 18. Then they will meet a qualifier at Bangalore on March 21, Pakistan at Mohali on March 25 and India also at Mohali on March 27.
The semi-finals will be on March 30 and 31 and the on April 3.
The inaugural World T20 Cup was won by India in South Africa in 2007-08, followed by Pakistan in England in 2009, by England in the West Indies in 2010, by the West Indies in Sri Lanka in 2012-13 and by Sri Lanka in Bangladesh in 2013-14.
Thus far Australia have failed to win a World T20 title. The closest they came to lifting the cup was in 2010 when they lost to England by seven wickets in the final at Bridgetown.
Will Steven Smith’s men break the hoodoo this time?