- Updates from the teams’ opening match at the SCG
- Start time in Sydney is 6pm AEDT/8pm NZDT/8am BST
- Any thoughts? Email Jonathan or tweet @JPHowcroft
One of Australia’s key performers early on with the ball will be the accurate paceman Josh Hazlewood. He spoke to Simon Burnton recently about his long career on the fringes of T20 before his sudden ascendancy.
One thing that makes his explosive return to T20s all the more remarkable is that during his time in the wilderness he not only did not train specifically for it, he did not even watch the shorter-form games. “I don’t watch much cricket in general, to be honest,” he says. “If we’re coming up against Sri Lanka down the track I might watch a little bit of their games but usually there’s enough footage to watch in bowling meetings. So yeah, I hardly watch any cricket.”
Born in Singapore but raised in Australia, David had a spluttering start to his career – a so-so stint with Perth Scorchers in the Big Bash and a handful of games for his birth country didn’t mark him out as anything special. All that changed in 2020-21 when he signed for Hobart Hurricanes and in modern cricketing parlance “started pulling up trees”.
