New fathers Marsh, Head confident leading into Test Summer cold
Brand new father Mitch Marsh is set to limit the impact of Cameron Green’s absence this Summer, while Travis Head is ‘mentally fresh’ coming into the series cold.
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Mitchell Marsh witnessed the most special delivery of his life and then sent down a few of his own as the big allrounder looks to nullify the impact of Cameron Green’s absence this summer.
Australia will have brand new fathers batting at No.5 and 6 in the first Test against India on Friday, with Marsh’s wife, Greta giving birth to a baby girl exactly a week after Travis Head and his family welcomed a boy to the clan.
Marsh momentarily left Cloud Nine to hit the training paddock with teammates at the WACA, where he sent down several overs of his medium pace in what is a major boost for Australia’s chances.
Losing Green for the summer has the potential to serve as a seismic blow to the balance of Australia’s line-up, but Marsh can offset that by defying his history of injury dramas to play a key role with the ball.
Captain Pat Cummins made it clear a few weeks ago that Australia likes Marsh to mostly save his overs for matches and don’t want him trying to send down too many in practice, but evidence on Monday suggested the 33-year-old is ready to step up to the plate and fill the void left by Green.
“The reality is he’s our allrounder and he’s going to need to be bowling,” spinner Nathan Lyon said.
Like Marsh, Head has not picked up a cricket bat for more than a month, but his experience coming in cold from his Honeymoon to lead Australia to World Test Championship glory against India in 2023 has him confident that his best batting can come when short on match experience.
“I do feel good. I feel mentally fresh and I’ll get some work done here,” Head said.
“I could play every single day if I really wanted to, I’ve never found fatigue (a factor) … but who doesn’t get frustrated with what they do and who doesn’t get tired in their day to day work?
“It’s how you work through that and I feel like I’ve had an ability to do that over the last five years.”
Steve Smith on Sunday won the golf championship at the Perth institution, Lake Karrinyup Country Club, which has hosted the Australian Open four times.
Now teammates are expecting him to nail down his best Test match form in his return to his favoured position at No.4.
Head thinks Smith’s move back down will help improve Australia’s partnership batting after cohesion was lacking earlier this year in Test series against New Zealand and the West Indies when the master batter was opening.
“”We’ve always had guys stepping up. We talked about this morning different guys stepping up at different stages,” Head said.
“We’d probably like to bat a little bit better in partnerships. One individual guy has probably got runs in each innings of each Test, which is great to have match winners, but you look back two or three years ago and there were really big partnerships and guys really enjoyed batting with each other.”
Australia is desperate to avoid what would be a humiliating third consecutive loss to India on home soil.
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