Image Credit- Getty
Travis Head has played in the goal for the first time
since breaking his hand in South Africa, and he is optimistic that he will be
able to travel out to India on Thursday to join the World Cup team.
Head faced throwdowns after having the cast removed
late last week. The fracture that fast bowler Gerald Coetzee caused at
Centurion is healing well, according to scans, but he still needs one last
approval before joining the Australian team.
“It’s coming along well, and probably better than
we hoped,” Head told cricket.com.au. “When we decided not to go with
surgery, which would have meant a ten-week recovery, we were told it would be
minimum six weeks with the splint before we could look at playing again.
“Going by that plan, the Netherlands game will be
just under six weeks from impact which is a pretty aggressive date so
everything would have to go perfectly from here to make that deadline.
“But we’ll just see how it progresses over the
next few days and I’m excited by the prospect of joining the boys over there
later in the week.”
When the selectors decided to only have 14 players
available for the opening stage of the tournament and essentially replaced Ashton
Agar with a specialist batter in Marnus Labuschagne to assist cover for Head’s
absence, it was made clear how important Head was to Australia’s ambitions.
Since his return in 2022, he had been having an
outstanding run for the ODI team, averaging 60.84 with a strike rate of 119.84.
Aaron Finch, a former captain of Australia, claimed that the team’s early
troubles were clearly affected by his absence.
“Sometimes it’s not the amount of runs he gets
but the pressure he puts on the opposition because they know he’s going to come
hard, they can panic and get a bit defensive in their mindset and then [David]
Warner gets away, and if [Mitchell] Marsh comes in, he gets away as well,”
Finch told
While the selectors have put huge stock in what Head
is capable of, there remains a possibility they still opt to replace him and
the chance of that could increase if Australia are unable to win against Sri
Lanka on Monday, which would leave them a mountain to climb to reach the
semi-finals.
“There’s still a few hurdles we need to clear,
and everything needs to fall into place from my end and from the team’s point
of view over there before the final decision is made,” Head said.