Cricket Australia (CA), on Tuesday, confirmed that regular skipper Pat Cummins would not return to India for the upcoming One-Day International (ODI) series against India, starting on March 17 in Mumbai.
Notably, Cummins didn’t play the last two Tests of the recently-concluded Border-Gavaskar Trophy, which India clinched 2-1. The New South Wales cricketer had left India after the second Test to care for his mother Maria, who died from breast cancer last week while the final Test was being played in Ahmedabad.
“Pat won’t be coming back, he’s still taking care of what’s happened back home. Our thoughts are with Pat and his family as they go through that grieving process,” said Australia head coach Andrew McDonald as quoted by cricket.com.au.
In the absence of Cummins, Steve Smith will lead the Aussies like he did in the last two Test matches against India. For the unversed, Cummins had taken over the ODI captaincy role after Aaron Finch’s retirement last year. However, the Westmead-born cricketer has led the Aussies in just two ODIs so far, both of which came against England at home in November.
Cummins has not been replaced in the 15-member squad, but Nathan Ellis was recently picked in the outfit after Jhye Richardson was ruled out, having been forced to undergo hamstring surgery. Keeping an eye on the World Cup later this year in India, Australia have selected their full-strength ODI squad for this series.
“We’ve got a couple of conversations around the balance of the team we want to play. We’ve gone in with a structure with eight batters to bat a little bit deeper, we’ve tried that. So there’ll be a mix of combinations as we lead into the World Cup. A lot of allrounders [have been] picked in the squad, and they can all play in the one team. So we’ve got to answer a few of those questions,” added McDonald.
Australia ODI squad vs India (updated):
David Warner, Travis Head, Steven Smith (captain), Marnus Labuschagne, Mitchell Marsh, Marcus Stoinis, Alex Carey, Glenn Maxwell, Cameron Green, Josh Inglis, Sean Abbott, Ashton Agar, Mitchell Starc, Nathan Ellis, Adam Zampa.
