Steve Smith confirmed yesterday that he’s not Australia’s captain in the shortest form of the game and it was just because of Aaron Finch’s unavailability that he led the side in the one off Twenty-20 versus England the other day.
Australia managed to beat England by 3-2 in the 5-match One Day International series.
The Kangaroos won the decider easily by 8 wickets yesterday and ended their disappointing tour on a good note.
The conditions were perfect for batting on a gorgeous day at Old Trafford and it was a very good toss to win for England.
The ball was always going to nip around early on, but, after half an hour or so; the batting would have been enjoyable.
It’s not long back when Mitchell Johnson had proved to be sort of unplayable for England.
The Three Lions were just not able to find a way to deal with the left arm speedster when they had faced him in Australia a couple of years back.
But, Johnson might not be able to make the same sort of impact in the Ashes series this time around as he is not going to get the pitches to his liking.
The English pitches will be slow and low and bounce will not be that much of a factor.
James Faulkner is very quickly turning himself into a batting all rounder now. These days in the Indian Premier League, he is batting 5 or 6 for his team Rajasthan Royals and he is delivering for them too.
Faulkner’s biggest strength as a hitter is his bat swing. It’s so fluent that most of the times, the connection happens to be perfect and the ball goes sailing into the stands and, his power too.
Faulkner is such an incredibly strong man that he actually does not need to hit the ball off the meat of the blade to get the maximum value for his shots. His half hits are enough.
Glenn Maxwell’s return in form is the best news for Australia at this stage because if Maxwell is delivering with the bat, it makes them that much more deadly a team to contend with.
In the title game of the Carlton Mid tri series, Maxwell scored 95. The value of that knock was immense just because of the time at which it was played.
English had the chance to win that game right there when Maxwell arrived. If they had got rid of the Victorian and a couple more low order players cheaply, the Aussies would have struggled to get to even 150 on those tricky 22 yards in Perth.
Mitchell Johnson appears to have been affected by the amount of workload that has been put on him this summer by his captain Steven Smith.
The ferocious fast bowler is starting to collapse a little bit and the reports are coming through that the Australian team management might keep him out of the Sydney test match on precautionary grounds.
In the three test matches against India, Johnson has not bowled with the same kind of pace that he had been bowling with during the 2013-14 Ashes series.