June 19, 2024

Marsh is willing to bowl, and Maxwell encourages him to improve his batting form – T20

Australia’s captain hasn’t touched the ball since the IPL, but if circumstances call for it, he might play in the Super Eight stage.

Glenn Maxwell feels the skipper is close to making a significant impact with the bat. Mitchell Marsh has declared himself ready to bowl in the Super Eight stage of the T20 World Cup 2024, giving Australia another option ahead of their game against Bangladesh in Antigua.

Marsh has not bowled since withdrawing from the IPL due to a hamstring injury. His return to the game has been handled cautiously, as his first rehabilitation took a little longer than anticipated.

“I’ll be available to bowl,” he said. “With the line-up that we’ve got, I don’t really necessarily see a need for me to bowl, but I think it’s really important in this format to have options and we’re blessed with plenty of those.”

With Marcus Stoinis playing a significant part, Australia has not been found lacking despite Marsh being rested from bowling duties. Against Scotland, they employed 12 overs of spin in anticipation of possible Super Eight conditions.

If Australia deployed Ashton Agar as a second frontline spinner once again and then decided they needed some extra overs of seam, then Marsh getting some ball time would become a more plausible scenario.

“Physically feel good,” Marsh said. “It’s always nice to have a bit of break from bowling and I often joke about that. But Stoin and I often talk about it as allrounders, we love being in the game.”

Marsh would not say if Australia would stick with their balance of attack against Scotland or go back to using three specialist quicks against Bangladesh. The numbers at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium are skewed by four-wicket hauls for Adam Zampa and Adil Rashid against Oman and Namibia, so the spinners haven’t received much help thus far. However, Australia is on guard for severely spinning conditions in St Vincent when they play Afghanistan.

Maxwell can be the second spinner if Australia decides to activate Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood in their starting lineup after they were rested against Scotland.

Maxwell can be the second spinner if Australia decides to activate both Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood in their starting lineup after they were rested against Scotland.

“For me and Mitch, we got a lot of confidence out of that England game for the role we played,” 

Maxwell told ESPN’s Around The Wicket. “Even though it’s a small sample size we still feel like we played out role; we set the innings up for the lower order to then go nuts. The opening batters going out and scoring at 12, 13 an over can be bit misleading to how conditions are and if we try to go at that rate for the rest of the innings thinking that’s what it’s like we could throw our wickets away.”

“Mitch has been unbelievable over the last couple of years, since he’s come back into all three formats, especially the Test stuff, [and] I think that’s probably filtered into the confidence in the other two formats. Watching him go about his work, you always know he’s only one or two shots away from basically ruining a game, and we are looking forward to seeing that.”

Regarding his own form, which is the result of a subpar IPL, Maxwell stated: “Still feeling really good. I’ve been hitting the ball pretty well, but…it’s just been really hard to, I suppose, get that rhythm and momentum. You’ve seen our openers go out there and pump it all over the place then in the middle order it’s been quite difficult to adjust.”

“The only one throughout the tournament who has consistently smashing them is Stoin – he’s been outstanding. Having those guys below me gives me a lot of confidence, and actually knowing I have a bit of time to get myself into the tournament, we’ve got some real quality below us. It’s a nice position to be in that I don’t feel like I’ve fully hit my straps, played pretty well against England…but I know it’s not far away.”

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