After Australia went down to a 1-4 series loss in the five-match One-day international series against now ranked World No. 1 India, the visitors’ skipper Steven Smith emphasised that domestic cricketers must come to the salvage and play its part for the struggling side particularly in the 50-over format.
The 28-year-old Sydney-born Smith believes the national tournament could be a watershed moment for some of the performers to break into Australia national side while hinting an overhauling of the limited-overs side.
“We’ll have a good look at the one-day comp [competition] back home and hopefully a few guys jump out of the pack and get some really big runs and bowl really well as well,” Smith was quoted as saying by Cricket Australia.
However, the domestic players are looking forward to rising to the occasion, in the ongoing 2017 JLT ODI Cup in Australia which is further a great chance for the youngsters – to impress the selectors.
The unorthodox batsman Smith revealed the domestic competition would see promising youngsters pressing for their positions respectively to pile-up the miseries for the senior campaigners, who are struggling in the contemporary cricket.
“There’s possibly a few guys back playing in the domestic one-day competition at the moment who are going to put some pressure on the guys that are here,” Smith maintained.
Pertinently, the tournament kicked off at Allan Border Field in Brisbane on September 27 when Queensland thrashed Cricket XI Australia by four wickets.
The Selectors for the Cricket Australia (CA) would closely be monitoring the performance of the players participating in the One-day Cup, as the final is scheduled on October 21.
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Smith, who has had two fifties to his name from the series, is further hopeful that the problem would be resolved soon with quality players waiting in the wings for the Kangaroos.
Admitting the fact of poor performance in the sub-continent, Smith reiterated the side is aiming to see the players perform on a regular basis.
“Our results haven’t been good enough and we want guys to perform consistently,” Smith remarked.
While highlighting the significant problems particularly in the middle-order, Smith wants to go at full potency in the foreseeable fixtures after fast bowling duo Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood missed out the bilateral series owing to the injury.
Moreover, Australia won the solitary Bengaluru ODI by 21 runs after losing 11 matches on the trot.
However, the seven-wicket loss in Nagpur has further raised some pertinent questions among the Australian national fold, before going into the World Cup 2019, as the defending champions.
Earlier, the former Australian players have lambasted the selectors for disappointing the domestic prospects in the recent past.
Smith, who is averaging 59.66 in Test set-up, played 103 ODIs for Australia in which he scored 3,329 runs at an average of 43.23. He smashed eight centuries and 29 fifties.