Australian selectors yesterday dumped Aaron Finch as captain in favor of Steve Smith for the Twenty20 World Cup which begins next month in India, while Peter Nevill replaces Matthew Wade as wicketkeeper.
Finch has been skipper since October 2014, but with Smith already captain of both the Test and one-day international teams, national selector Rod Marsh said it was the right time for him to now take over in the shorter format.
“Aaron Finch has done a very good job captaining Australia in T20 cricket. He will have benefited enormously from the leadership opportunity and will remain a highly respected leader within the Australian squad,” Marsh said. “However, since he became T20 captain, there has been a broader leadership transition in Test and one-day international cricket, with Michael Clarke retiring and Steve Smith assuming the captaincy in Test and one-day cricket. We think now is the right time for Steve to lead Australia in all three forms of the game as it offers us important continuity, not only ahead of the World T20, but beyond that tournament as well.”
The Twenty20 World Cup gets underway on March 8 with Australia, who have never won the tournament, opening their campaign on March 18 against New Zealand.
Smith said he was looking forward to the new challenge.
“It’s a fast-paced game, you have to really think on your feet, be ahead of the game,” Smith said. “The World Cup is going to be a big challenge for us. It is one of the trophies that has eluded this side. We’re going to be playing in different conditions where we haven’t had a lot of success. It’s going to be a hard tour, but I’m really looking forward to it.”
A key surprise in the squad was the inclusion of Nevill, who is yet to play limited-overs cricket for Australia, but he was preferred to Wade, whose recent form prompted the change.
“We feel our batting depth in this squad is sufficient enough that we can have a specialist wicketkeeper in the squad,” Marsh said. “We want Australia’s best wicketkeeper playing in this tournament and we consider Peter Nevill to be the best in the country right now.”
Ashton Agar and Adam Zampa, both yet to play Twenty20 for Australia, claimed the spin spots ahead of Nathan Lyon and Cameron Boyce. They are to be complemented by the part-time off-spin of Glenn Maxwell, while Josh Hazlewood spearheads the attack.
Finch (hamstring), Nathan Coulter-Nile (shoulder) and James Faulkner (hamstring) were all named in the squad subject to proving their fitness.
“Overall, we believe the squad we have selected is well-balanced, and has the experience and talent required to be successful in India and help us win the World T20 title for the first time,” Marsh said. “We were able to look at a number of players during the Big Bash League and the recent T20 international series against India, and have selected the best short-form players available for the the conditions we will encounter.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier