Australia’s depleted squad for the Pakistan ODIs suffered a blow as Kane Richardson has been ruled out of the remainder of the tour after a hamstring injury. Richardson sustained the injury on Monday (March 21) while training in Melbourne ahead of the series.
As a result of his injury, the selectors have called up left-arm seamer Ben Dwarshuis for the white-ball leg of the tour consisting of three ODIs and a solitary T20I. Australia will now field an inexperienced pace bowling attack considering the first-choice seamers Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins won’t be a part of the limited-overs matches.
Jason Behrendorff, with 11 games under his belt, will now be the most experienced pacer. While Sean Abbott has played two ODIs, Dwarshuis and Nathan Ellis are yet to make their debut. Allrounders Cameron Green, Mitchell Marsh and Marcus Stoinis are the other pace bowling options Australia have at their disposal.
“One thing that will help is the guys have played a lot of T20 cricket,” skipper Aaron Finch said on the pace bowling group. “They’re quite inexperienced for Australia but I think playing T20 cricket will help them in that regard. There’s a lot of skill in the group and guys that have been around one-day cricket for a long time domestically as well.
“Having a lot of a lot of faith in their own ability is really important. When you have got guys like Abbott, he’s been around (international cricket) for a long time, Behrendorff (as well) – they’ve played a lot of state cricket, so I think it’ll be fine.”
