Buoyed by their batting depth, Australia opener Travis Head has said that they have no reason to abandon their aggressive approach in the upcoming T20Is against India. Having already won the ODI series, Australia will start as favourites in the 5-match T20I series beginning Wednesday in Canberra.
In a batting line-up that boasts of Head, captain Mitchell Marsh and Josh Inglis in the top three, the middle-order too isn’t short on firepower with Glenn Maxwell, Tim David, Marcus Stoinis, Mitchell Owen, Matthew Short forming the core of Australia’s T20 batting. Throw in Cameron Green, who isn’t available for the series, Australia have a formidable line-up at their disposal.
With the batting depth running all the way down, Australia have emerged as one of the teams that starts strong in the powerplay, where they have been scoring at a strike-rate of 169.97, averaging 61 runs in the first six overs in this calendar year.
“When you’ve got the power that we’ve got behind us, we’ve got to get a move on,” Head told cricket.com.au. “You don’t want to be chewing up balls up at the start when you’ve got (Tim) David, (Marcus) Stoinis, (Josh) Inglis, (Cameron) Green and (Glenn) Maxwell behind you. It’s huge power,” Head added.
While teams have used at least one anchor at the top three in the past, over the last 12 months or so there has been a drastic drift in this, with teams preferring attacking batsmen at all junctures. It is the model that the likes of Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad employed in the IPL and one which is becoming more common among the international outfits.
Since pressing a reboot after the last T20 World Cup, Australia have embraced a similar attacking intent which has seen them scoring at over 10 runs an over, which could well be the case in the T20Is against India.
“We can score anything if we can get going,” Head said. So, for Mitch (Marsh) and I (the plan is to) try and go out there and take advantage of it (Powerplay fielding restrictions). It’s been a strength of ours for a couple of years, that if you look at both one-day cricket and T20 cricket we’ve put a big emphasis on the Powerplay. We try not to be reckless, but at some stage it will look like that … but yeah, the plan is to try and get as many as possible,” he added.
