Cricket World Cup 2023: Travis Head’s arrival could be too late for flailing Aussies

Australia’s World Cup hopes are hanging by a thread, with coach Andrew McDonald saying his team deserves to be criticised, as they await the possible arrival of Travis Head.

Travis Head is progressing well from his broken hand but his potential arrival at the World Cup may be too late to save an Australian side that coach Andrew McDonald said deserved to be criticised.

The Aussies “will look at all options” at selection for what has effectively become a cutthroat match against Sri Lanka at Lucknow’s Ekana Stadium on Monday after being crushed by South Africa on Thursday night to make it two defeats from as many games to start the tournament.

While wicketkeeper Alex Carey paid the price for an underperforming middle order, McDonald stopped short of guaranteeing that his replacement Josh Inglis would hold his spot for the date with Sri Lanka, who is also winless through two matches.

As scrutiny intensifies around Australia’s squad choices for this tournament, McDonald said Head had passed a major hurdle in his recovery from the broken hand he suffered last month in South Africa.

Head has not yet arrived in India, still recovering from a broken hand. Picture: Phill Magakoe/ AFP

The Aussies remain hopeful Head can return for the back half of the World Cup, but given how dire things have quickly become, there is no guarantee Australia will still be in serious contention if and when the left-hander makes it to India. McDonald said that it would be up to the 14 fit members of the squad to turn things around.

“The bone (in Head’s hand) looks as though it’s healing nicely,” McDonald said.

“So the first checkpoint you want to call it that has been ticked off and now it’s about him getting moving and seeing how that responds to some physical work through that which began holding the bat and then potentially progressively hitting tennis balls. But as I said at the moment that’s happening in the background, and if he does become available, that’s fantastic.

“I’ve got great trust in the people that we’ve got in the squad. As I said, we’re focused on what we’ve got there and I think there’s quality skill sets there and we’re not performing the way that we would like and fair game, we’re going to be critiqued around that. We should be critiqued around our performance currently, and we’ve got to turn that around.”

Australia has failed to reach great heights with bat or ball but its fielding has been arguably the worst of the lot. The Aussies spilt five catches against the Proteas to go with a horror miss from Mitch Marsh which provided a reprieve for Virat Kohli in Sunday’s loss to India.

McDonald was not making excuses for a group that captain Pat Cummins said was “hurting.”

“They’re pretty stunned I think. They sit there, there’s a lot of silence in the room and our job is to regroup and get moving towards Sri Lanka and they’re quality players sitting in that dressing room and it’s hard to keep a quality group down for long and we have been down for longer than we would like as a team,” McDonald said.

Josh Inglis was handed the gloves ahead of Alex Carey. Picture: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

The coach explained that the decision to omit Carey – a mainstay of the one-day side for five years – was the culmination of weeks of middling form and not just a reaction to a second-ball duck against India. Making his World Cup debut, Inglis didn’t fire either, bowled by Kagiso Rabada for five and dropping Temba Bavuma.

“I think you can look at it as one game of the World Cup but you can you can look at sort of the past few months where we’ve been with as a middle order unit,” McDonald said.

“So (we thought) bringing Josh in, was going to improve that middle order impact but unfortunately hindsight will say that it hasn’t. But like any of those moves I think you look over a period of time to critique, not just one game in isolation. So yeah, it’s probably a trend (with the) middle order and unfortunately, Alex missed out.

“We will look at all options (for the next game). I mean selection will happen in a few days’ time. We’ve got a bit of time, up our sleeve before the next game against Sri Lanka and we’ll work through what we think is the best XI like we do in any other game.”