Most of Australia’s players have had scant preparation for the Twenty20 World Cup but captain Aaron Finch said his underdone squad can still bring the trophy home for the first time.
Many of Australia’s first-choice players elected to skip the recent white-ball tours of West Indies and Bangladesh and also sit out the resumption of the Indian Premier League, which is being played at the same United Arab Emirates venues which will host most of the World Cup games.
Leading paceman Pat Cummins has not played a match since April, while opening batsman Finch is also short of cricket after having recent knee surgery.
Marcus Stoinis is battling a hamstring strain and Steve Smith has only played a bit-part role for IPL side Delhi Capitals. Australia will have only two warmups against India and New Zealand before their first World Cup game against South Africa in Abu Dhabi on Oct 23.
“The two warmup games and the lead-in to the World Cup is going to be really crucial,” Finch told reporters yesterday.
“It’s a difficult one because... training indoors or training just in the nets is obviously no comparison obviously to game intensity. But I’ve got a lot of confidence in the experience of the group.
“We’ve got guys who have come off long layoffs before, we’ve got guys who have come off injuries before.
“And it’s not really all that much different when you’re trying to get yourself up to speed quickly.”
Finch said he was recovering ahead of schedule from his knee surgery and expected to be fit for the warmups.
He also backed David Warner to open with him at the World Cup despite his recent struggles in the IPL where he was dropped by Sunrisers Hyderabad.
Australia has won the one-day World Cup five times but has underperformed in the T20 version, with their best result a runner-up finish in the 2010 tournament in the Caribbean.
“We feel as though we’ve got a squad that can win the World Cup,” said Finch.
“We’ve had an interrupted preparation like everyone has over the last 18 months. We’re still very confident, though.
“We know if we play to our best we’re going to be hard to beat... We’ve just got to be at our best at the right time.”


Oman almost had to wave ‘Goodbye’ to World Cup due to deadly storm
The chairman of Oman’s cricket board told Reuters he would have had to wave “Goodbye” to the Twenty20 World Cup had a deadly storm that ripped through the Gulf state on Sunday taken a slightly different path.
Eleven people were killed as heavy winds and rain swept through the country after tropical storm Shaheen made landfall in Oman. The Gulf state will host six Group B matches at Al Amerat near Muscat, including three involving their own team, and Oman cricket Chairman Pankaj Khimji said they were “very fortunate” to have missed the worst of the storm. “We were so close to being virtually wiped out,” he told Reuters. “We had the cyclone only a few nautical miles north. It made the landfall there and it’s devastated that whole region and flooded the whole plain over there. “Had this had happened over here in this area, I’d have said ‘Goodbye’ to the World Cup.”
While a handful of hospitality tents bore the brunt of the storm, the organisers were pleased with the greener look of the outfield following the intense rain. “We got about three to four inches of rain,” said Khimji. “And that made the ground even more lush and greener, it looks even prettier now. It washed off all the dirt and sand.”
The World Cup gets underway on October 17.