'The Aus side is still as good as any' is pretty wild as far as statements going. It isn't nearly as good as previous Australian sides, and it's not as good as a few other sides in this competition. This side is like swiss cheese, there's holes all over the show.
this is mostly about it but there was absolutely chaotic selections going on prior to the WC that deserve criticism, and now dropping carey after one game is terrible stuff. has inglis suddenly got better in a week's time or something?
See Warner-Khawaja-Smith-Labu-Head-Carey-Maxwell. That looks a lot more solid at the top with hitters from 5 to 7.
The mistake was not dropping Carey sooner
Nah, that's simultaneously not enough bowling as Green and Marsh will get rekt in India and not solid enough batting as 4-7 are all too hit or miss. That's a very collapse prone middle order and the 5th bowler will go for 80+. Pushing Maxwell up from 7 is a terrible idea demonstrably and Green isn't particularly suited to that either. It's like moving Smith from 3 for a lesser player.
That's a lot better.
I already said the top 4 batting has been the issue. No one is expecting the all rounders down the order and keeper to bat like 30 overs and rescue the innings. That’s not their main role for the batting, they’re suppose to up the run rate and help with a bigger total later in the innings after a decent platform is set by the top 4. Green, Stoinis, Maxwell etc are not going to save the top 4 failures consistently no matter how good they can be.
Nope, weaker. Khawaja is not going to be better than Mitch Marsh as a white ball batter if both are performing to mean. Labu even less so.
I think there are deeper issues. In that team yesterday, only Inglis (who replaced the over 30 Carey) and Marnus (29) were under 30 (and many are mid 30's). The names being mentioned as potential replacements are either injury prone (Richardson) or even older (Khawaja). You can say that they're not performing, but this is an old team (and I have similar concerns for England but they have less Test players) at the end of a long run of cricket going back to the Ashes (and IPL in some cases).
i also think something, I think, has gone unsaid is that they got the Aaron Finch gamble wrong. He never should have been retiring in 2022. that's hurt things.
You’ve got a good point. A lot the others big teams like India, Pakistan, England etc have had injuries and worries before this tournament started and were better prepared for it. We had something similar but we just rely on our test side for replacements but didn’t have much people up and coming to take over in the shorter formats. Those other teams have a lot of other players pushing for a spot if someone has an injury or can’t make it but we don’t.
Even with the two failures marsh has averaged 55 opening the batting from 8 innings and is in the top 5 fastest scorers in the PP in the last 2 years in ODI. You can think he shouldn't be opening and come up for whatever reason you think so. 3 months ago ide have agreed with you. But head got injured and either side of that injury marsh has been gun opening.
Ross Taylor even mentioned that in his book.
Warners the big issue in my opinion. If he does not get a good start and the run rate is low then it’s just putting pressure on the rest of the order and it’s been showing lately not just this World Cup . That’s why Head is their biggest loss because he was providing the platforms while Warner could go at his own rate. Then the others would come in once the platforms was built
Not that it’s even a chance there’s no way in hell you’d actually want Khawaja in there now. Guys absolute lazy running between the wickets and in the field. The sort of attitude the team doesn’t need right now