ODI World Cup 2023: Australian captain Pat Cummins backs bigger squads for global tournaments

Ahead of Australia’s match against England in the 2023 Men’s ODI World Cup, captain Pat Cummins has backed having bigger squads in global tournaments.

Ahmedabad: Ahead of Australia’s match against England in the 2023 Men’s ODI World Cup, captain Pat Cummins has backed having bigger squads in global tournaments. As of now, the World Cup has 15 main teams, with some traveling reserves.

With Glenn Maxwell out on Saturday due to concussion and Mitchell Marsh flying home for personal reasons, Australia are faced with the prospect of choosing 11 players from just 13, raising questions about future World Cup squad numbers.

“Honestly, I mean it’s a two-month tournament. You wouldn’t want to be in a position where, for example, a team like New Zealand has had a few injuries and luckily they’ve been able to keep someone like Kane in the squad.”

“But if you suddenly had to rule him out, I don’t think that would be good for cricket or a World Cup. It’s not like you can take players from other countries, so I always think you should have as many players to choose from as you need,” Cummins said at the pre-match press conference.

At the moment, Australia don’t have a full 15 players to choose from for their matches, with Travis Head making a comeback after recovering from a broken finger with a fantastic century against New Zealand in Dharamshala and Sean Abbott yet to play a match.

“To be honest, once the tournament started, we thought we would have 15 available. But in a day you have more cricket than any other format, you have injuries, it’s high intensity, the matches are close together. So we always knew there would be some degree of attrition.”

“I mean, the good thing is we’re three games away from the semi-finals. Obviously we have to get to the semi-finals, but hopefully this is a bit of the last problem where we can choose from a smaller squad and once we get closer we will have a full squad.”

“But I have a bit of the most important eleven in my head, the way we want to play, but I am very happy with our team. “I think what we have shown in this tournament is that we have managed to switch up the batting order and everyone who comes in has stepped up and done really well,” he added.

Speaking about the absences of Maxwell and Marsh, Cummins said: ‘Maxi is hopefully (available) for the Afghanistan game so he will just miss this one. But he trained well yesterday and is still taking it every day.”

“But we’re hoping he’ll just miss this one and then we’ll wait and see Mitch – he’ll definitely be back. I don’t think it will be a super long trip back to Perth, but the important thing is that he is back home and we will give him as much time and space as he needs.

Cummins also admitted he was surprised by England’s form in the competition, with the defending champions having lost five of six games to sit bottom of the points table with their semi-final hopes hanging by a thin thread.

“A bit surprised; They clearly have some class players and have performed very well in these types of tournaments in recent years. I’m a little surprised at what went wrong, but that’s probably not for me to say: these tournaments are pretty fickle. You see it in T20 tournaments around the world, sometimes the best looking teams just don’t start well and then find it difficult to gain ground.