Cricket Australia (CA) on Sunday, 14th April, have released their contract list for the 2019-20 season with the big names returning to the 20-man centrally contracted set and they are none other than Steve Smith and David Warner besides the domestic stars James Pattinson, and Marcus Harris.
However, Cameron Bancroft, who was also suspended in March 2018 for his involvement in a ball-tampering scandal in South Africa with Smith and Warner, failed to make it to the list of the centrally contracted cricketers for 2019-20 along with Peter Siddle, or Marnus Labuschagne.
In the list, the most surprising inclusions were Pattinson and Harris to the nationally contracted group, though, the Victorian paceman has earned the contract on the back of his show for Victorian, as he is considered as a potential Ashes game-breaker, while the opener has put massive domestic runs on the board which earned him the central contract on Sunday.
Trevor Hohns, Chairman of the national selection panel, stated, “We believe the 2019-20 contract list provides us with a versatile group of players who can represent Australia across all three formats over the contract period. Our key criteria focused on selecting a pool of players who are going to help us in our ambition to win the upcoming World Cup and Ashes Series in England, and who can also play the various formats over the course of the Australian summer.”
Meanwhile, Mitchell Marsh, Ashton Agar, Matthew Renshaw, Kane Richardson, Billy Stanlake and Andrew Tye are among the most notable omissions from the CA central contracts.
2019-20 Cricket Australia’s contracts:
Pat Cummins, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Alex Carey, Aaron Finch, Usman Khawaja, Peter Handscomb, Marcus Harris, Travis Head, Josh Hazlewood, Nathan Lyon, Glenn Maxwell, Shaun Marsh, Tim Paine, James Pattinson, Jhye Richardson, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Marcus Stoinis, David Warner, Adam Zampa
(With CA’s official Network Inputs)
