Going into the ICC Champions Trophy 2017, Australia will be under the immense spotlight without second thoughts. Apart from being the world champions, off-field issues have disrupted the Kangaroos as tense negotiations between the players’ association and Cricket Australia (CA) carry on without any productive result coming to the fore.
That, however, hasn’t distracted fierce pacer Mitchell Starc from his ultimate focus in the lead up to the tournament. Starc is now finally fit after returning home midway from the tour of India and also not participating in the IPL. The left-arm pacer, who was the Man of the series of the 2015 World Cup, is quite excited about Australia’s chances in the upcoming event and his own form will be crucial in determining Australia’s fate in a tournament which saw them being winless in the previous edition.
Opting for all out aggression, Australia could well sport a “fearsome four” pace attack comprising of Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and James Pattinson. On the sidelines of their second warm-up game against Pakistan at Birmingham, Starc spoke about the four pacers working together.
“We’re looking forward to hopefully playing a few games together if the four of us get picked,” Starc said about playing together. “We’ve obviously come through the ranks together, we’ve played a lot together and against each other in the under-age stuff and heading into to domestic cricket.” “But we haven’t all been in the park at the same time for Australia. So I think it’s exciting for the four of us.”
Speaking about his own return, Starc mentioned that he was in good shape ahead of the grand event.
“Even coming back into the nets, it didn’t feel like it took too long to get some good rhythm back. So hopefully it’s not like last time with such a big layoff,” said Starc. “I’m pretty confident with how it’s going, it’s feeling good in the nets and with the few centre wickets we’ve had. But it’ll be nice to get out in the middle and bowl some overs in match-like conditions.”