Although Australia didn’t win a lot of test series away from home in the last World Test Championship (WTC) cycle, they won enough test matches to qualify for the final and they will now face the last season’s runners up India in the WTC final starting from 7th of June at Oval.
Given the conditions that will be on offer in England, Australia will pretty much look to go with the same team composition that they go with when they are playing at home. Oval is expected to be a flat surface with good bounce and that’s what the Aussies mostly get in their home conditions.
Here is Australia’s strongest possible XI for the World Test Championship final against India –
Openers (David Warner, Usman Khawaja)
David Warner has not been that consistent in test cricket for Australia for quite sometime now, but he will get another opportunity in the World Test Championship final and he will have to prove himself in that game to stake a claim in Australia’s playing XI in the Ashes.
Usman Khawaja will be a straightforward pick because not only has he scored heaps of runs for Australia at home, he was brilliant on a very tough India tour as well earlier this year.
Middle order (Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith, Travis Head)
Australian fans can claim that they have the best middle order in the world at the moment as both Smith and Labuschagne are in top 5 in the world batting rankings in test match cricket and both of them are technically very sound for English conditions.
Travis Head is a little different from Smith and Labuschagne as he plays his shots right from the word go and plays almost at the tempo of white ball cricket, but his aggressive intent adds another dimension to Australia’s middle order.
Allrounder and wicketkeeper (Cameron Green, Alex Carey)
Cameron Green is Australia’s no. 1 allrounder in test cricket even though he is very young at the moment and has hardly played a handful of test matches. Not only can Green bat at different tempos depending on the situation of the game, he can also give Australia 10 overs a day to help the fast bowlers recover a bit.
Alex Carey might not have scored heavily with the bat in test cricket recently, but his safe glove-work behind the stumps makes him an automatic pick as wicketkeeper for Australia in test cricket.
Bowlers (Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon, Scott Boland)
As far as the bowling is concerned, Australia will go with their same old formula of three fast bowlers and one spinner with Nathan Lyon being the sole specialist spinner.
However, the only difference will be that the Aussies, in this final, might go with Scott Boland as their third seamer rather than Josh Hazlewood.
