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Healthy speedsters convince coaches on rest policy

Australian fast-bowling coach Adam Griffith has faith Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins can manage their bodies through the World Cup

Australia are hopeful strike pair Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins can play every game of their World Cup campaign, as the reigning 50-over champions gear up for their toughest bowling challenge of the tournament against heavyweights England.

Fast-bowling coach Adam Griffith conceded support staff were concerned about the heightened risk of injury for their star quicks during their run of four games in nine days that involved nearly 700 kilometres of travel.

But Starc and Cummins, who have both expressed a willingness to play every World Cup game despite a looming Ashes tour, got through unscathed and have been key to putting the Aussies in pole position for a semi-final berth.

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"What those two do really well is manage their bodies and manage themselves really well," Griffith said of the pair who have taken more than half of Australia’s total wickets. "It’s a pretty hard thing to pull someone from a World Cup game - they’re pretty big every time you play.

"They won’t want to be rested.

"We’ll obviously keep an eye on things, but we got through that really tough period where we played four games in (nine) days and that was the period we were a bit worried about from a physical perspective.

"Now we are through that, we’ve got an excellent support staff that look after the guys physically and get them ready for every game and hopefully we don’t have to worry about that (resting them)."

The final 15 days of Australia's group-stage campaign will see them play just three games, while they also have minimal travel in that period given they have back-to-back games in London before a four-hour drive to Manchester for their last match against South Africa.  

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That's not to say Aaron Finch's men will be putting their feet up.

Their next opponents England are fresh off a shock loss to Sri Lanka and recent history would suggest Australia will have a tough time consigning them to another defeat on Thursday.

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England haven't lost two home ODIs in a row in more than three years, while a fresh Lord's pitch is likely to suit the belligerent batting approach captain Eoin Morgan re-endorsed despite it backfiring against Sri Lanka.

Asked if England will be harder to rein in than other sides they’ve come up against, Griffith said: "They can be. It depends on conditions, it depends where you’re playing.

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"Obviously Lord’s will create some new challenges if it’s a fresh wicket, which it will be for us.

"We’ll have a look at the conditions and how we want to bowl but, when we’re at our best and we’re swinging the ball early and we’re doing our stuff through the middle and the end, we can be a pretty good bowling unit too."

Griffith said Australia will take confidence from defeating England in a warm-up game in Southampton last month.

The hosts were admittedly missing a handful of first-choice players, including Morgan, Joe Root, Mark Wood and Adil Rashid.


Image Id: 69CF9CB40CA6480CA51FEBE87FAAD71D Image Caption: England's Jos Buttler bats against Australia in a World Cup warm-up game // Getty

"They’re pretty dynamic," said Griffith. "But we saw in the practice game we played against them, although they didn’t have all their big guns playing - but they had a few - and when we execute well and do what we do really well, then hopefully that’s good enough against a team like that.

"We’ll have a few things up our sleeves from watching them through the tournament but we don’t want to make things too complicated.

"We still want to keep things simple and do what we do really, really well and we’ll back our guys in."

2019 World Cup

Australia's squad: Aaron Finch (c), Jason Behrendorff, Alex Carey (wk), Nathan Coulter-Nile, Pat Cummins, Usman Khawaja, Nathan Lyon, Shaun Marsh, Glenn Maxwell, Kane Richardson, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Marcus Stoinis, David Warner, Adam Zampa

June 1: Australia beat Afghanistan by seven wickets

June 6: Australia beat West Indies by 15 runs

June 9: Australia lost to India by 36 runs

June 12: Australia beat Pakistan by 41 runs

June 15: Australia beat Sri Lanka by 87 runs

June 20: Australia beat Bangladesh by 48 runs

June 25: England v Australia, Lord's

June 29: New Zealand v Australia, Lord's (D/N)

July 6: Australia v South Africa, Old Trafford (D/N)

July 9: Semi-Final 1, Old Trafford

July 11: Semi-Final 2, Edgbaston

July 14: Final, Lord's

Sync Australia's World Cup schedule to your calendar HERE

For a full list of all World Cup fixtures, click HERE