Australia captain Pat Cummins has called for the ICC to allow bigger squads for long tournaments like the Cricket World Cup. This came after Mitchell Marsh returned home for personal reasons and Glenn Maxwell suffered a concussion.
This means, Australia only has 13 players available to choose a playing XI from, when they face England in Ahmedabad on Saturday.
Not only Australia but New Zealand has also been hampered by injuries to key players. Kane Williamson (broken thumb), Mark Chapman (quad injury), Lockie Ferguson (hamstring), and Matt Henry (torn hamstring), are all sitting on the bench.
Though New Zealand has called up Kyle Jamieson to replace Matt Henry in the squad, they have limited options to choose from for their next must-win match against Pakistan on Saturday in Bengaluru.
Quizzed on the eve of the match on whether the long format of this World Cup and the extensive travel up and down India makes a case for a couple of more members in the squad, Australian captain Pat Cummins replied in the affirmative.
He said: “Yes, to be honest, I mean, it's a two-month tournament. You wouldn't want to be in a position where, say, somewhere like a team like New Zealand has had some injuries and luckily, they've been able to hold someone like Kane (Williamson) in the squad but if suddenly you had to rule him out - I think that wouldn't be good for cricket or a World Cup. It's not like you can poach players from other countries, so I always kind of think as many players as you need, you should be able to pick from.”
Pat Cummins also spoke about whether Australia had enough players to choose from for the England match.
"We've got 13. We'll announce the XI at the toss tomorrow. Maxi's hopefully for the clash against Afghanistan, so he'll just miss this one. But he's trained well yesterday and still taking it day by day, but hoping he'll just miss this one, and then Mitch we'll wait and see - he'll definitely come back I don't think it'll be a super long trip back home to Perth but yeah the main thing is he's back home and we'll give him as much time and space as he needs,” Cummins added.
The Australia captain lamented missing both of his gun players for a key tie against England.
He said: "Yes, it's not ideal. Both have been the star players of the tournament so far at different times. So, that's the way it is. We knew at the start of the tournament we were going to need a full squad of 15. And yeah, I'm not even sure we've played the same 11 two games in a row through injury or selection. So, it's kind of unfortunate, but we knew over a two-month tournament you're going to have to chop and change a bit.”
The 30-year-old was all praise for the venue of the 'mini-Ashes' clash of the World Cup gigantic Narendra Modi Stadium, and compared it to the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).
"It (the stadium) feels like the MCG, where you can feel like the crowd hasn't really turned up and then you look at the numbers and it's 30,000 or 40,000. It's a beautiful stadium. I've played here a few times and the field and wickets are always great. We love playing here. It feels a bit more like an Aussie ground than anywhere else. Hopefully a big crowd and they say a great game of cricket (in store tomorrow)," he gushed.
(PTI inputs)
