Even before their tour of India commenced, Australia dealt with two huge blows as their new ball pair of Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood were ruled out. The injury to Starc was seen as a severe one and with the home Ashes just around the corner; the selectors felt that it was best to make Starc the tour of India so that he could recover in time for the Ashes.
As all Australian supporters would have liked, Starc is indeed on the path of recovery and has even begun sweating it out in the nets. In a video tweeted by cricket.com.au recently, the star left-arm pacer is seen hitting the right spots in the nets and is bowling at full throttle.
If this news is anything to go by, Starc could well make it in time for the home Ashes, which commences in the last week of November. With Australia likely to have three pacers in the playing XI, Starc’s presence as the spearhead of the attack becomes even more necessary. Below, is the video of Starc hitting it out in the nets.
He's baaaaack! @mstarc56 off the long run for the first time since his injury setback and he's right on the money! pic.twitter.com/qUyUMjO5RQ
— cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) September 19, 2017
Regarding the loss to India in the Chennai ODI, Australian skipper Steven Smith admitted that the chase was always going to be difficult with two new balls for 21 overs.
“It was never going to be easy chasing 160 with two new balls. I think 160 with one new ball would have made things a lot easier,” Smith said.
“When you have two new balls from both ends, as you saw the whole game, we took three wickets with the new ball and they found it quite hard. It was the same for us. When you are playing 20 overs, you don’t have a great deal of time to make things up. You need eight an over basically from ball one. It was difficult in that aspect. Perhaps we could have been a little bit more defensive at the start, keep wickets in hand and went harder later.”