Sydney
Ball-tamperers Steve Smith and David Warner were on Monday selected for Australia’s World Cup squad, but there was no room for Josh Hazlewood or Peter Handscomb.
It is the first call-up for the former captain and his deputy since the expiry late last month of year-long bans for their part in the “sandpapergate” scandal in Cape Town that rocked cricket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They\n were eligible for the final two games of Australia’s recent \nlimited-overs tour against Pakistan, but selectors preferred that they \neased themselves back at the Twenty20 Indian Premier League.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All \nthe top order have been firing, and it is Handscomb who is the fall guy \ndespite averaging 43 in 13 games this year. The decision to drop him \nmeans the team only has one wicketkeeper in Alex Carey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Steve \nSmith and David Warner come back into the squad. Both are world-class \nplayers and it has been pleasing to see them produce some good form in \nthe IPL.” Australia’s recent red-hot form has been built on the back of a\n rock-solid opening partnership between skipper Aaron Finch and Usman \nKhawaja.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The decision for Langer now is whether to retain that \ncombination when the 50-over World Cup begins in England and Wales at \nthe end of next month or move one of them down to make way for Warner, \nwho traditionally opens the batting.Shaun Marsh, Smith, Glenn Maxwell \nand all-rounder Marcus Stoinis make up the middle order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Selectors\n opted for two spinners in Adam Zampa and Nathan Lyon and five quick \nbowlers.As with the batsmen, Australia’s selectors faced a bowling \nconundrum as they target a record sixth World Cup triumph.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But \nHazlewood, who has been out of action since January with a back injury, \nmissed out, with Hohns saying the focus was on having him ready for the \nAshes Test series in England which begins in August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jhye \nRichardson, who dislocated his shoulder last month, makes the grade \nalong with Nathan Coulter-Nile and Jason Behrendorff.Hazlewood and \nHandscomb were instead named in Australia’s A squad for their tour of \nEngland starting in June, which will provide opportunities for players \nto make their case to be included in the Ashes squad.”Given the depth of\n talent and competition for spots there were a number of tough calls we \nhad to make to settle on our squad of 15,” said .\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SydneyBall-tamperers Steve Smith and David Warner were on Monday selected for Australia’s World Cup squad, but there was no room for Josh Hazlewood or Peter Handscomb.It is the first call-up for the former captain and his deputy since the expiry late last month of year-long bans for their part in the “sandpapergate” scandal in Cape […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59219,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59220,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59218\/revisions\/59220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}