Australia vs India: Mitchell Starc called up for the T20I series decider

Australia, after winning the first T20I by a whisker, faced a close scare in the second game. The Indian bowlers came back hard and restricted them to 132/7 in 19 overs. However, rain might have possibly saved the day for the home team. The Aussies still lead the series 1-0 and it all boils down to the series decider now. Hence, Cricket Australia (CA) decided to get their bowling spearhead, Mitchell Starc back into the T20I squad.

He has been brought in place of Billy Stanlake, who got injured minutes before the toss in the 2nd T20I. The tall, lanky pacer rolled his ankle while doing the catching drills and was replaced by Nathan Coulter-Nile at the last moment. With Starc coming in now, he could well be drafted straight into the XI for the final game of the series.

Starc hasn’t played a T20I in Australia since 2014

The injury-prone Mitchell Starc has been out of action in the T20Is for a while in the last few years. He has only been focussing on the longest format of the game and hasn’t played much limited-overs cricket of late. The left-arm pacer last played a T20I in 2016 against Sri Lanka in Colombo. In Australia, he played in February 2014 against England at the ANZ Stadium in Sydney. Although he was in the squad for the recent Pakistan series, he didn’t take the field even for once.

Australian captain Aaron Finch confirmed that Mitchell Starc was drafted into the squad. He said that Starc has got a good amount of experience in white-ball cricket and said that he could be very dominant.

“(Starc has) got so much experience in the limited-overs games as well and we’ve seen how dominant he can be when he gets it right with the ball. We’ll have a look at the wicket this afternoon and discuss the side but coming straight off a Shield game with an eye on the first Test, his preparations will be really good,” Finch was quoted as saying by cricket.com.au.

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