Travis Head Likely To Make Return To Australia's Squad For WC Match vs Netherlands

It would be fair to say that Australia are at a point of crisis right now in the World Cup. Existential and mathematical. The odds are slim in the favour of the five-time champions, who have already lose two out of their nine games in the group stage.

A long tournament allows time for mistakes and recovery, both of which the Aussies could make use of as batter Travis Head aims to make a return to the Australia squad in time for their match-up against the Netherlands.

Head could very well be the jolt of attacking energy that the Australian team are in desperate need of currently. Two consecutive collapses of the Australian batting order has shed light on a glaring issue that the perennial contenders will have to address.

Head sustained a fracture to his left hand in the fourth ODI against South Africa, prior to the World Cup, withstanding a short delivery from pacer Gerald Coetzee.

The sustained injury ruled Head out of the early stages of the World Cup for sure, but the Aussies still opted to choose him for the squad, in hopes he can recover soon and contribute to the team which is in dire need of his aggressive batting style currently.

“It’s coming along well, and probably better than we hoped. When we decided not to go with surgery, which would have meant a 10-week recovery, we were told it would be minimum six weeks with the splint before we could look at playing again.” Head said.

“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.” the opener added.

Talking about his return to the nets and being physically fit to bat and field, Travis said:

“I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to bat when the splint came off but, apart from a fair bit of stiffness given I hadn’t been able to use it for the past four weeks, I was able to hit balls and play a fair range of shots.”

“I’m not sure what it will mean for fielding, we haven’t explored that yet”.