Marsh’s bowling takes a back seat as fellow allrounders step up

Mitchell Marsh has hinted that his five-month absence from the bowling crease is unlikely to come to an end during Australia’s T20I series. Marsh has not bowled in a competitive match since tearing his hamstring during the IPL, including in last week’s 3-0 clean sweep up in Scotland.

Australia have an abundance of allrounders in their T20 set-up, with Jake Fraser-McGurk the only man in their squad who neither keeps wicket nor bowls. With Marsh keen to give Cameron Green and Aaron Hardie opportunities with the ball, his own medium pace is unlikely to be required.

“I’m sort of just building,” Marsh said. “I don’t tend to bowl myself too much, is the honest answer, and we’re lucky that we’ve got plenty of bowling options within our team, so we’ll see how we go… my bowling’s on line: whether or not I bowl, we’ll wait and see. We’ve got heaps of options. I’m always building something.”

Australia will hope to have Marsh fully fit to bowl during their five-match Test series against India, which starts in Perth on November 22 – which he described as feeling “like a long time away”. Their management will carefully manage players workloads before that series, with Pat Cummins missing the whole England tour to give him a break from bowling.

“A lot of our priorities will be geared around that,” Andrew McDonald, Australia’s coach, told SEN on Tuesday morning. “You’ll see that unfold with the management of our players. We’ll be very pointed around who does what in terms of [Sheffield] Shield cricket coming into the summer to make sure that they are ready for that first Test match.”

Australia play Pakistan in three ODIs and three T20Is in November, and it is expected that anyone included in the Test squad won’t feature in the T20Is. “We may have to give up a little bit in terms of that Pakistan white-ball series with certain players, to make sure that we are firmly prepared,” McDonald said. “We’re really keen for India to arrive.”

This UK tour is Australia’s first men’s cricket since their Super Eight exit in June’s T20 World Cup, which saw them win their first five matches before back-to-back defeats against Afghanistan and India saw them crash out. Marsh has retained the T20 captaincy – and will also step in for Cummins in the five ODIs against England – but was coy on his long-term ambitions.

“It feels like a lifetime ago now, that T20 World Cup,” Marsh said. “It was just disappointment: we went there with the hope of winning it, like every other team did, and unfortunately, we didn’t play our best cricket at the right time. In tournament play, that’s what you rely on…there’s a lot of cricket to be played between now and the next World Cup [in 2026] but hopefully I’m there.”

McDonald isolated Australia’s fielding as the primary reason for their failure to reach the semi-finals, most notably dropping five catches in the defeat to Afghanistan. “We’ve got a few things that we need to work through, but clearly the key area for us that was disappointing was our fielding… that makes it really difficult for the captain and the team to function.

“There was some discussion around Mitch Marsh and his captaincy, but if creating opportunities for the team with your bowling changes and your field positions is the way that we’re going to critique a captain, I thought he did a fantastic job. We just weren’t able to execute in those moments, and that really played out in the Afghanistan game.”