NEWS
Follow UsMitchell Starc believes that it’s a ‘huge positive’ that Australia have a full-strength squad at their disposal, and has attested that the Kangaroos would not want to settle for anything less than winning the T20 World Cup despite their recent form being poor.
Australia will enter the T20 World Cup having lost eight of their last ten T20Is, and the Aaron Finch-led side are not even one of the favorites primed to make the semi-finals, despite boasting a plethora of world-class individuals.
But in spite of the expectations being minimal, Starc made it clear that Australia’s aim will be to lift their maiden T20 World Cup title.
"It's a huge positive that we have got our full-strength team here available to us for the World Cup. Obviously we didn't have that through the West Indies and Bangladesh,” Starc told reporters.
"It's no secret that we haven't won a T20 World Cup so I'm looking forward to hopefully being a part of our first one.
"We have got our full-strength team available ... it's up to us now. We have set out to win the World Cup. We don't want anything less.”
Not too long ago Australia were ranked number one in T20 cricket, but 2021 has been a disastrous year for them, with the Kangaroos having lost 11 of the 15 T20Is they’ve played. A combination of injuries and unavailability of players forced head coach Justin Langer to field weakened sides against both West Indies and Bangladesh, and the same resulted in Australia losing 8 of the 10 T20Is against the aforementioned two sides.
Starc believes that, across the past few months, younger players have unfortunately seen themselves be thrown into the deep end.
"We had some really young, inexperienced players and some young guys playing their first games of cricket for Australia come into some really foreign conditions and thrown in the deep end really quickly.”
The Aussies will be playing all their Super 12 games across Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and Starc insisted that they have ‘all bases covered’ for the conditions, The left-arm seamer further claimed that he has a ‘good feeling’ about the World Cup, given Australia exactly know what it takes to excel on the big stage.
"In terms of our make-up, the group feels like we have covered all bases that we need to for these conditions," Starc said.
"I am feeling good about it. We have all played enough cricket to know what we need to do to best prepare ourselves for these sorts of tournaments.”
The Kangaroos will kick-start their T20WC campaign against South Africa on October 23 in Abu Dhabi.
