Favourites Austalia out to gatecrash another Indian party

Snapshot

Let's be honest. Save the hardcore cricket fans, not many in Australia are completely aware of this T20 World Cup taking place. And the onus is on Mitchell Marsh and his team to really light up the tournament for it to capture the attention, forget imagination, of the critical mass of Australian sports fans. It's the time of the year; we're on the cusp of the football season.

It's the time differences for most of Australia's matches, with a number of them starting post-midnight on the eastern seaboard. And it's also the general lack of connection for a lot of Aussies with their white-ball teams in the modern era. All that will change if Australia can go deep. For, nothing gets Australians cheering for their team like the potential of a World Cup win.

The squad, and what it tells us

Mitchell Marsh (captain), Travis Head, Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis, Cameron Green, Tim David, Josh Inglis (wk), Cooper Connolly, Nathan Ellis, Xavier Bartlett, Adam Zampa, Matt Renshaw, Ben Dwarshius, Josh Hazlewood, Matthew Kuhnemann

The discussion around the Australian squad so far has been more around the ones missing out rather than those who've been picked. Steve Smith being the glaring omission despite his irresistible form of late in T20 cricket. Pat Cummins's late withdrawal owing to injury and the lack of clarity around the timeline for Josh Hazlewood's participation does add quite a layer of uncertainty around the former champions' campaign. While the batting is power-packed on paper, the bowling doesn't carry the level of menace that Australian attacks do going into World Cups.

The road to the World Cup

Last five T20Is: L-NR-L-L-L (latest)

It's been a rather unconvincing run into a World Cup for this Australian team, having just been clean-swept by Pakistan in Pakistan. On the back of India having beaten them on Australian soil in the five-match series prior to the Ashes. Australia had been on a dominant run before their home summer, having won 16 out of 20 T20Is since the last World Cup.

The way they play

After a couple of dud returns in the last two T20 World Cups, there has been a significant change in approach from Australia in the shortest format. Especially with the bat where they've borrowed a page from the Indian handbook, being ultra-aggressive from the very start. It also helps that they have the likes of Marsh, Travis Head and Cameron Green towards the top of the order followed by a collection of some of the most elite power-hitters the game has seen in Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis and Tim David.

That does at times mean an overreliance on their batting with the retirement of Mitchell Starc having taken away a major sting in their tail. They are a team who will back themselves to chase any target down but could be vulnerable when it comes to defending totals. Only one of their 10 wins in 2025 came after they'd batted first.

Who can bend a match in 10 balls

In a team brimming with unadulterated boundary hitters, Tim David stands out like a beacon, which tells you simply how destructive he's become in this format. While he's already got a reputation of needing less than 10 balls to turn matches on their head, his new-found consistency in 2025, where he averaged 49.37 with a strike rate of 197.5 across 14 T20Is has taken him into a whole new stratosphere of x-factor batters.

Scheduling

Australia have a pretty clear-cut schedule where they play all their opening round matches in Sri Lanka before shifting base to India where their games will be played at Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi in that order. So coming off the slower surfaces in Sri Lanka, their batters could well be best-placed to peak at the right time on what should be better pitches to bat on in India.

Banana-peel fixture

Australia aren't generally a team that lose too often to the lesser-fancied teams in World Cups. And you'd doubt they'd have too much trouble against the likes of Ireland and Oman. However, in the co-hosts, Sri Lanka, and the ever-improving Zimbabwe, there are two teams who could potentially trip them in the early chapter of the tournament.

What a good World Cup looks like

Nothing short of a win to seal what would be Australia's second T20 World Cup triumph would suffice. It's also the only trophy missing in the cabinet for the Andrew McDonald era. Even if the Victorian did play a huge role as assistant coach in shaping the 2021 campaign in the UAE. This would also be in all likelihood the last chance to add more silverware to their resume for the likes of Maxwell, Stoinis and maybe a couple of the others.