Australia was without Steve Smith, the captain, Mitchell Starc and John Hastings in the warm-up game against Sri Lanka on Friday, which Travis Head chalked up to the side testing their bench strength.
“Smithy had the day off, Starcy and Hasto also, so we’ve got strength in our bench which is always what you want with good teams,” he explained. “It’s competition for spots and we’ve definitely got that at the moment, but come game day everyone will be there. We’ve got one more [warm-up] so as we get closer to that first game, the structure will start to come out.” Head made a strong case for selection for Australia’s opening ICC Champions Trophy 2017 game with an unbeaten 85 in their win over Sri Lanka in a warm-up match at the Oval on Friday (May 26). Head put on a 75-run partnership for the fourth wicket with Aaron Finch, who made a brilliant 137 as Australia chased down Sri Lanka's 318 with two balls to spare.
“It was a good hit out, probably a tighter game than we wanted it to be,” said Head after the game.
“They dug in pretty well in the end and posted 300, and chasing down, I thought we did beautifully. Finchy at the top of the order was fantastic. To bring it home it was a nice team performance. We just had a really nice game plan, we try to spot every ball and try not to leave it right to the end -- ended up working out that time -- but I feel it was pretty controlled.
In parts, it probably wasn’t as controlled as others, but it’s not going to be clean sailing in run chases.”
Being the current ICC Cricket World Cup champion has made Australia one of the favourites to win the title in England and Wales, and Head believes the side's experience at the ICC Cricket World Cup will benefit it in the coming few weeks.
“There are some strong teams,” he reflected. “We played good tournament cricket back in the World Cup -- the experience we’ve got from that and the players that we’ve still got -- we’re confident going into the first game. We’ve got to hit the ground running and play really well because we’ve been a little bit inconsistent in some of the last 12 months.”
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