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Lucknow: Cameron Green is expected to be replaced by a fit again Marcus Stoinis in Australia’s World Cup team to face a suddenly formidable South Africa in Lucknow, at the end of a year that has stretched the young all-rounder both physically and mentally.
After a hamstring complaint kept him out of the opening game against India in Chennai, Stoinis has trained well in the lead-up to the match up with the Proteas, who hammered Sri Lanka in Delhi after coming from behind to beat Australia in a warm-up series at home.
Cameron Green has faced a draining schedule since nominating for the IPL auction.Credit: Getty Images
While the selectors are yet to choose their team for the game, typically waiting until closer to the start for a 50-over affair than a Test match, Green is the most likely player to drop out for Stoinis according to a source familiar with Australia’s planning. Reserve wicketkeeper Josh Inglis and seamer Sean Abbott are the other two players in the squad.
Australian captain Pat Cummins said Stoinis was fit and ready to play on what is his IPL home ground. “It’s a ground he knows pretty well. Chatting to him and a few of the other guys, it’s probably a different condition to what it is for the IPL. The wicket looks really good. Maybe a bit of pace and bounce. It’s something we’ll look at it pretty closely.”
At times in Chennai, Cummins looked to be labouring. But he said Australia had no plan to rotate their seam bowlers and that he meant to play every match. He said he felt he was bowling as well as ever in this rarely played format.
“The intention is to try and play every game. We won’t be rotating goals unless we really have to, if someone’s really fatigued or managing a niggle that needs a bit of a rest,” he said. “It’s a World Cup. You can’t really take any lightly.
“I feel like [my bowling] is in as good a place as ever has been. Early in my career, I found that the hard balance between Test cricket and T20. Like getting too funky.
“It’s a different kind of challenge to the other formats, but I feel I’m in a really good place and I enjoy the challenge of having to be prepared for almost anything.”
Cummins said Chennai and the loss to India was another place at another time and would not figure strongly in consideration about what to do at the toss. He said leg-spinner Adam Zampa’s struggles in Chennai should be seen in context.
“His prep leading in was probably a bit lighter than he would normally have,” Cummins said.” I wouldn’t look too far into the last game. I thought he bowled OK, but it’s pretty hard defending 200 and trying to create something out of nothing. He’ll be a great if he has a bit more of a total to bowl to.”
From the moment Green was bought by Mumbai for $3 million in the Indian Premier League auction there were concerns that he would now be spending an enormous amount of time on the road playing cricket in a huge year for the men’s national team.
As a consequence of Green’s IPL nomination, he has already spent more than 30 weeks away from home, the majority of that time in India.
Even during the Ashes series in England, Green was showing signs of physical and mental fatigue, and close observers of his batting and bowling have noticed technical bad habits starting to creep into his methods, in addition to the kinds of mental mistakes he did not make while sculpting a first Test century in Ahmedabad in March.
This time last year, Cummins had issued a warning to all those around Green that he needed to be handled carefully in order to avoid flaming out – something Cummins related to his six years on the sidelines with injury between his first and second Tests.
“Even the last couple of summers, it’s one of my first kind of thoughts whenever I bowl him is: we don’t want to burn him, he’s young, he’s vulnerable,” Cummins had said. “I have been on that side.
“It has been a real huge win for from the medical side of things to have him [Green] play as much cricket as he has over the last couple of years. And fortunately, he can fall back on his batting even if he’s not bowling heaps.
“Now he’s in and around three formats, it becomes even more important. He is someone who loves playing, so even when he goes back to WA we have got to manage that because we have got 15 Test matches in the next six months plus World Cups and lots of cricket.”
Meantime, South African legend AB de Villiers says the way the current low billing team is playing reminds him of 2015, when a new-look South Africa went within one hit of reaching the World Cup final. He says it suits them to play with low expectations.
“Despite a stunning start to the campaign, expectations amongst fans remain low and the team’s good form has gone under the radar,” de Villers wrote in his column for the ICC. “But that is exactly what makes me so excited about South Africa’s chances in India.
“I have played in previous teams that had more superstars in its ranks but struggled to deal with the pressure that came with that.
“For the current generation, it is quite the opposite. There are fewer established figures but lots of players ready to put their stamp on the world stage, free of the baggage from previous failures.
“They are all playing in a way that reminds me of the 2015 World Cup, when we reached the semi-finals before narrowly losing to New Zealand in what was a harsh reminder of the fine margins in international cricket.
“We played with absolute freedom every single game and I remember that semi-final really feeling like we played our dream game, with a few dropped catches ultimately costing us. It was part of a new culture that I know is still in place and will be evident against Australia on Thursday, in what will be a very tough battle.”
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