COLOMBO
Australia’s limited-overs captain Aaron Finch revealed that Pat Cummins had been carrying his hip problem for more than a year as the injury list among his squad in Sri Lanka continued to grow.
Cummins, who was rested from the T20I series, left the IPL early to recover and is primed to return in the opening ODI in Pallekele today (Tuesday), but he has played a significant amount of cricket, including his first two Test series as captain, while troubled by his hip.
“He’s very keen to go,” Finch said on the eve of the ODIs. “[He’s] fresh and recharged after getting over that hip injury. That had been lingering around for 12-14 months so for him to be able have a good solid recovery period and a training block, he looks like he’s up and running,
“It’s been something that’s been ongoing for a little while. Just causes him a lot of discomfort at times, there hasn’t been one particularly incidence, it’s just a gradual build-up and he hasn’t really had the time to really recharge and recover. So to have the time off at the back end of the IPL and these T20s was important for what is such a huge 18 months of international cricket.”
None of Australia’s frontline quicks are expected to play all five of the ODIs which come in the space of 11 days although the spate of injuries could increase workloads.
Finch was hopeful of having Mitchell Starc back from his badly cut finger for the third game, but Kane Richardson has been ruled out of the series after suffering what was termed a “severe” hamstring injury before the final T20I, although how bad it was only emerged after the match in which he played.
“I wasn’t aware of [it] during the game so that was pretty big of him to be able to get through a T20 game at that intensity,” Finch said.
Kane, himself, had been an injury reinforcement to the squad for the first two matches following Starc being ruled out while Jhye Richardson had previously been called up as well.
