Ahead of the fourth Test against India at Melbourne, which will be a Boxing Day Test, Australian coach Andrew McDonald said that explosive left-handed batter Travis Head battles no particular fitness concerns and will be just fine to play the highly-anticipated match, as reported by ESPNCricinfo. India and Australia head to the MCG Test with the series level at 1-1 and two matches left. Head, who suffered a minor quad strain during his batting in the second innings of the third Test at Brisbane, did not feature in Monday’s practice session but did have a short outing on Tuesday when he did some running and fielding.
He is the leading run-getter in the series with 409 runs in five innings at an average of 81.80, two centuries and a fifty.
Speaking ahead of the match in a pre-match presser, McDonald said as quoted by ESPNCricinfo, “Has he got some things to work through? Yeah, he has. There is no concern at the moment. Has he been officially ticked off? I am not sure. I did not see the sort of back-end of his training session there, but I am pretty confident he will play.”
“I think he looked good with the bat in hand so obviously skills are in good order. Yeah, it will just be basically what risk is associated with that. He had a small strain to the quad.”
“But no concerns from my end. He has been able to be running, yeah, so I think he will be fully functional come the game time,” he concluded.
During the nets, Head did have some discussions with McDonald and Aussie physio Nick Jones but the coach said that it was just about his fielding position.
“Clearly coming off a strain he has got that, obviously the demands of bat-pad. So that is all that was about. And my question to Nick Jones was just around what he has got to do to finish off the session, so I was across it beforehand, or just making sure nothing had changed during the session, and then we just started to speak about India, what they might do. So it was nothing really that specific,” he concluded.
In 13 Tests against India, Head has made 1,124 runs at an average of 51.09, with three centuries and four innings. His best score is 163. In all formats against India, he has made 1,724 runs at an average of 46.59, with four centuries and six fifties in 40 innings and best score of 163. This includes centuries in the World Test Championship final and the ICC Cricket World Cup final which came in winning cause.
Since the WTC final last year, Head has scored 897 runs against India at an average of 74.75, with four centuries and two fifties in 12 innings and best score of 163.
Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Sean Abbott, Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Travis Head (vc), Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Sam Konstas, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Marsh, Jhye Richardson, Steve Smith (vc), Mitchell Starc, Beau Webster
India’s squad for fourth and fifth Tests: Rohit Sharma (C), Jasprit Bumrah (VC), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant (WK), Sarfaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel (WK), Ravindra Jadeja, Mohd. Siraj, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Harshit Rana, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar, Devdutt Padikkal, Tanush Kotian.
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