Ahmedabad (Gujarat): Australia has suffered a double blow in their ongoing World Cup campaign as all-rounders Glenn Maxwell and Mitchell Marsh both are going to miss the next league game against England. Glenn Maxwell suffered a freak injury after playing golf recently and Mitchell Marsh also flew home for personal reasons.
Ahead of the fixture against England, Australia skipper Pat Cummins has stated that the teams should be allowed to play with a roster of more than 15 players.
"It's not like you can poach players from other countries, so I always think of as many players as you need, you should be able to pick from," Cummins said during his pre-match press conference.
"Yeah, to be honest. It's a two-month tournament. You wouldn't want to be in a position like New Zealand. They have had some injuries and, luckily, they've been able to hold Kane (Williamson) in the squad. But if suddenly you had to rule him out, I think that wouldn't be good for cricket or the World Cup," he added.
Pat Cummins further revealed that Maxwell is going to miss the next game and the team wants to give breathing space "Maxi's, hopefully (will be fit), for the clash against Afghanistan, so he'll just miss this one. But he trained well yesterday and is taking it day by day. Mitch, we'll wait and see -- he'll definitely come back. I don't think it'll be a super long trip back home to Perth but the main thing is he's back home and we'll give him as much time and space as he needs," he stated.
Pat Cummins opined that Australia will not take the English challenge lightly in spite of their opponents performing below par in the tournament as they have some world-class players in the squad. "They've got some class players and performed really well in these kinds of tournaments over the last few years. A little bit surprised in terms of what's gone wrong, but these tournaments are pretty fickle, sometimes the best-looking teams just don't start off well and then find it hard to kind of gain ground," he concluded.
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