The 22-year-old reveals the batting advice from Ricky Ponting that has turbo-charged his IPL form
Jake Fraser-McGurk had 34 against his name after the first two overs • Associated Press
Rising star Jake Fraser-McGurk says he has no issues with missing out on Australia’s T20 World Cup squad and believes he wasn’t in a position to feel like he had earned a place in the final 15-member squad.
Fraser-McGurk was a notable omission from Australia’s squad last week alongside Steven Smith as the selectors opted for a tried and trusted group that gave them flexibility in terms of the combinations they could use.
Fraser-McGurk has not played a T20I for Australia, having played just two ODIs at the back end of the Australian summer, but has lit up IPL 2024 with two 15-ball half-centuries including scoring 84 off 27 balls against Mumbai Indians where he smashed the IPL’s best bowler Jasprit Bumrah for a six and two fours and India’s allrounder Hardik Pandya for 22 off an over.
But Fraser-McGurk told the Willow Talk podcast that he was not bothered by his non-selection in the World Cup squad and said his conversations with the selectors had been clear.
“The communication was really good,” Fraser-McGurk said. “There’s two ways you can look at it. You can look at it through, ‘this is what I’ve done to prove my case,’ and then there’s also, ‘look, a month and a half ago I wasn’t even in the picture.’
“They probably had a good idea of what [the squad] was a month and a half ago, trying to build that and get the connection in the team. And it’s also hard to fit in. You’ve got David Warner, our best opener ever in three formats. You’ve got Travis Head, who is lighting it up over here and has lit it up over the past 18 months.
“And then Mitch Marsh is the same and he’s also the captain.
“I can’t really see myself batting five or six because we’re pretty set there with Tim David, Cam Green and those sort of blokes. That’s the way I think about it. That’s fine. There’s hopefully going to be more time for that.
“If I do somehow get a travelling reserve [spot] then great, I can get a good experience there. It didn’t really bother me a hell of a lot because I wasn’t in this position to sort of feel like I’ve earned that yet. World Cup cricket is a lot different to IPL and franchise cricket.”
Fraser-McGurk said he is loving being in the Delhi Capitals environment and revealed that coach Ricky Ponting has given him some batting advice that has helped him enormously.
“What he said to me that’s really stuck with me is ‘you hit the ball a lot further when you swing at 80% instead of 100%, you just have to find the middle and then it’ll go for six,'” Fraser-McGurk said.
“And I was like, okay, well, that’s good, because when I swing harder my head moves. And I did look at the footage throughout all the recent games I’ve been playing apart from the IPL, and he’s right, when I do swing quite hard my head’s moving as I’m trying to hit the ball.
“Someone who can pick up those little things like that, and you’re probably not even going to notice it, to have someone who can see that within the first couple of sessions of watching me bat, that sort of blew my mind and then I’ve just been training that the whole time and it’s paying off quite well.”
Alex Malcolm is an associate editor at ESPNcricinfo
