Won’t be able to field first XI in all games against Indian women: Australia coach Matthew Mott

By PTI

BRISBANE: Seven international games, including a Test match in a space of 20 days, won’t allow Australia to field their best first XI in all games against India in the upcoming series, Southern Stars’ head coach Matthew Mott has hinted.

With Sydney and Melbourne being COVID-19 hot-spots, the Indian team and 12 out of the 18 Australian players are currently in a two-week hard quarantine and according to a ‘cricket.com.au’ report, they will allowed out a week before the first WODI at Mackay on September 21.

The Indian team won’t have any access to training facilities during the two-week hard (room) quarantine.

“Our sports science people are quite rightly nervous,” Mott told 91.3 SportFM referring to seam bowlers Ellyse Perry, Annabel Sutherland, Tayla Vlaeminck, Maitlan Brown and Stella Campbell, who are currently in room quarantine for a fortnight.

“Here, they won’t bowl for 14 days and will go straight into a very congested schedule, so our management of the players has to be right on point,’ Mott said.

He made it clear that all first team players won’t get to play every game keeping workload management in mind.

“Not everyone is going to play every game, we’ve got 18 in our squad, and we’ve got some young players. The older more resilient players will find a way though because they’ve banked up that experience and their bodies are a bit stronger.

“But for the younger bowlers – Darcie Brown, Tayla Vlaeminck, Maitlan Brown – we’ve got to be very smart around how we integrate them into it.”

Among the Aussie pacers, Sutherland is returning from a stress fracture to her upper leg, Brown has recovered from severe hamstring injury while Vlaeminck has had a series of major foot, knee and shoulder injuries.

“In an ideal world, we’d have played the Test last to build up those loads gradually, but it’s in the middle,” Mott continued.

“So there are different bowlers we’ll have to use in different formats and the consequence is we won’t be able to play our best team every game – that would be crazy from a player fatigue and management point of view.

“We’ll try and make it work but it’s going to be a really interesting series to see how we navigate around the complexities that will be thrown at us.”

Moot termed the schedule as a very “busy one” considering the team hasn’t played a lot of cricket since April due to various state borders employing their own health safety protocol.

“It’s going to be tough, it’s going to be exciting but it’s going to hit us hard. We’ve gone from not a lot of cricket to a very busy schedule overnight,” Mott added.

Full Schedule Sep 21: First ODI, Great Barrier Reef Arena, Mackay Sep 24: Second ODI, Great Barrier Reef Arena, Mackay (D/N) Sep 26: Third ODI, Great Barrier Reef Arena, Mackay Sep 30 – Oct 3: Test match, Metricon Stadium, Gold Coast (D/N) Oct 7: First T20, Metricon Stadium, Gold Coast Oct 9: Second T20, Metricon Stadium, Gold Coast Oct 10: Third T20, Metricon Stadium, Gold Coast.