Australia announce World T20 squad

Australia's selectors have overhauled their squad for the World T20 tournament. Incumbent wicket-keeper Matthew Wade misses out in favour of Peter Nevill, who has yet to play a T20I.

Aston Agar, another yet to make his international T20 debut, is also included in the 15-man squad, while Steve Smith takes over the captaincy role from Aaron Finch.

Shaun Marsh, Cameron Boyce, Chris Lynn, Nathan Lyon, Scott Borland and Travis Head are among those that miss out.

AUSTRALIA'S WORLD T20 SQUAD: Steve Smith ©, David Warner (vc), Ashton Agar, Nathan Coulter-Nile, James Faulkner, Aaron Finch, John Hastings, Josh Hazlewood, Usman Khawaja, Mitchell Marsh, Glenn Maxwell, Peter Nevill (wk), Andrew Tye, Shane Watson, Adam Zampa

Bookmakers have Australia at 5/1, second favourites to win the World Cup. Hosts India are the favourites.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/s...70547.html

There was simply no point in having Aaron Finch as the captain now that Smith had been bled into the leadership position so well. It is good that the selectors chose to move on. Australia have a got a decent team but the lack of quality spin option will hurt since this tournament is being played in the subcontinent. The fast bowlers are notorious for leaking runs, so Australia will have a difficult task of keeping the targets low. Also the middle order seems very weak and in all three matches against India they were simply blown away by the slower bowlers, that too on the flat wickets of Australia. They are good contenders for making the knockouts but I don't expect them to win the tournament by any means.

Surprised no Nathan Lyon !!!

[quote author=thedeatheater1410 link=topic=102580.msg677683#msg677683 date=1455018024]
There was simply no point in having Aaron Finch as the captain now that Smith had been bled into the leadership position so well. It is good that the selectors chose to move on. Australia have a got a decent team but the lack of quality spin option will hurt since this tournament is being played in the subcontinent. The fast bowlers are notorious for leaking runs, so Australia will have a difficult task of keeping the targets low. Also the middle order seems very weak and in all three matches against India they were simply blown away by the slower bowlers, that too on the flat wickets of Australia. They are good contenders for making the knockouts but I don't expect them to win the tournament by any means.
[/quote]

It is surprising that Australia are the bookies second favourites, though I think this might speak more to the lack of quality in the other subcontinent teams; over the last year, Pakistan are 7-5, India 4-4, Bangladesh 4-5 and Sri Lanka 2-5 in T20 matches.

And to be fair to Australia, the middle-order that faced India in the T20's consisted of Head, Lynn, Bancroft and Wade - none of whom are included in the World Cup squad. In my opinion, a middle-order of Maxwell, Watson, Mitch Marsh and James Faulkner is pretty formidable. I agree that their spinning options are a bit thin, and the absence of Starc and Johnson are big misses.