Steve Smith XI to lock horns with David Warner XI as the Kangaroos prepare for the Tigers

As a part of the preparations for the Bangladesh tour, Cricket Australia has decided to organize an intra-squad match among the Aussie cricketers. The three-day clash will see 8 news faces joining the battle which is sure to give rise to some exciting new talents. The match will be held in Darwin and the two teams will be led by Steve Smith and David Warner respectively.

Jake Weatherald and Tom Andrews are two players from Darwin with a lot of promise who will join the squad. Both of them made their debuts for South Australia during the 2015-16 season. The match will be played at the Marrara Oval Ground and will see Redbacks skipper Travis Head also feature in the competition. Adam Zampa and Kane Richardson will be two more South Australians participating in the high-profile clash.

Victoria trio Marcus Stoinis, Chris Tremain and Jon Holland will also take part in the match-up. Intra-squad matches are not something new that Australia is trying out. They had organised quite a few of the same previously before Test matches. Ahead of their tour of India earlier this year, they organised an intra-squad match which was held in Dubai.

Darren Lehman’s Aussie players have arrived in Dubai and have been sweating it out to cope up with the extreme heat in Bangladesh. The excessive temperature in Bangladesh will be a challenging factor for the visitors once they arrive at Dhaka.

Steve Smith XI: Matt Renshaw, Usman Khawaja, Steve Smith, Glenn Maxwell, Matthew Wade, Marcus Stoinis, Chris Tremain, Mitch Swepson, Josh Hazlewood, Tom Andrews, Jackson Bird.

David Warner XI: David Warner, Travis Head, Hilton Cartwright, Peter Handscomb, Ashton Agar, Jake Weatherald, Pat Cummins, Nathan Lyon, Kane Richardson, Adam Zampa, Jon Holland.

What Swepson had to say:

“We’ve been doing a lot of fitness and strength testing since we’ve been here,” said leg-spinner Mitchell Swepson.

“It’s going to be good for the boys to acclimatise before we get to Bangladesh – it’ll be humid and hot over there. It’s great that we’ve got a base in Australia with weather like this where we can come and acclimatise.” he added.

Fiery speedster Mitchell Starc is the only player who would not feature in the match. The bowler is still recovering from a foot injury and has been ruled out of the Bangladesh tour. Part time wicketkeeper Peter Handscomb is the most likely take guard behind the wickets for David Warner’s team.

“It’s good to have plenty of spinners here to feed off,” Swepson said.

“We had four or five spinners in India to work with and it’ll be good again here to have plenty of spinners this week, just picking each other’s brains and getting a lot of work done together. he added.

“I’ve heard from a couple of locals that the decks up here are pretty spin friendly. So I’m looking forward to seeing what they’re like and hopefully I can work on some plans that I want to put in place for Bangladesh.” he concluded.