No specialist left-handers to counter Hasaranga threat

• Aussie worry ahead of five-match T20I series

Australia will not have a single specialist left-handed batter to call upon for the start of their Dettol International T20 series against Sri Lanka on Thursday.

Vodafone Ashes player-of-the-series Travis Head has been released from the Aussies’ T20 International squad and will instead get a final red-ball tune-up in the Marsh Sheffield Shield for South Australia this week before leaving for the all-format tour of Pakistan later this month.

Fast-bowling allrounder Daniel Sams has replaced Head in a 16-man squad eager to impress ahead of the T20 World Cup in Australia later this year. Head will return for the final two matches of the series in Melbourne. 

With David Warner – who has dominated Sri Lanka recently with scores of 100no, 60no, 57no and 65 in his past four T20I innings against them – also rested for the series, it leaves Australia decisively short of lefties.

Wicketkeeper Matthew Wade has extensive experience batting in the top three in short-form cricket and if they were to use Wade to break up the glut of right-handers in the five matches against the Lankans, it would mean pulling him away from the six-seven spot in which he performed so well during the last T20 World Cup.

It poses an interesting question for an Australian team coming up against a Sri Lankan side led by the world’s number one ranked T20I bowler, leg-spinner Wanindu Hasaranga.

Wrist spin has been an Achilles heel of the Australians in the shortest format while Hasaranga, who dismissed Glenn Maxwell and Aaron Finch at the World Cup, has bewitched right-handers in a remarkable start to his international career. The 24-year-old has taken 52 wickets at 13.71 in his 33 T20Is since his debut in September 2019.

Of those 52 victims, 43 have been right-handed, and 29 of those were bowled or lbw. That wicket-taking prowess combined with his suffocating economy rate of 6.21 means Hasaranga will likely dominate Australia’s planning meetings for the five-match series.

The other left-hand batting option at the hosts’ disposal is the dynamic Ashton Agar, who was brutally unlucky to miss most of Australia’s World Cup campaign having been one of the T20 side’s leading performers in the years leading into the tournament.

Agar has only batted above six once in 40 previous T20Is, but his improvement with the bat could see him deployed higher up.

Helping to counter Australia’s left-hander shortage will be the versatility of Maxwell, whose switch-hitting ability forces teams to set fields radically different to what they would normally employ against traditional right-handed power hitters.

Sri Lanka will be wary of Maxwell given he has struck 286 runs at 95.33, with a strike-rate of 218.32, against them in T20Is. (cricket.com.au)