Starc dropped as Finch, David out for crunch clash

Australia have made a huge call for their crucial final Super 12s game against Afghanistan, with star fast bowler Mitchell Starc dropped to make way for Kane Richardson and hamstrung batters Aaron Finch and Tim David both ruled out.

Afghanistan won the toss and chose to bowl, the same choice Australia would have made if the coin had landed in their favour.

Starc's role within Australia's T20 World Cup team has changed during this tournament, with him not taking the new ball and operating instead as a wicket-taking option after the power play.

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Australia XI: David Warner, Cameron Green, Mitch Marsh, Steve Smith, Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis, Matthew Wade (c/wk), Pat Cummins, Kane Richardson, Adam Zampa, Josh Hazlewood

Afghanistan XI: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Usman Ghani, Ibrahim Zadran, Gulbadin Naib, Darwish Rasooli, Najibullah Zadran, Mohammad Nabi (c), Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Naveen-ul-Haq, Fazalhaq Farooqi

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But given the need for the defending champions to not just win, but do so emphatically to hold any hope of making it through the play-off games, selectors have chosen to leave out the left-arm speedster and go with Richardson on his former home ground.

It's a big play, given Richardson has not played a game in the tournament to date and it's the same scenario for Smith who comes into the starting line-up as a replacement for David who has not recovered from the hamstring injury he suffered during last Monday's win over Ireland at the Gabba.

It was the same game that put paid to Finch's chances when he sustained an identical injury, with the Australia skipper's place at the top of the order going to all-rounder Cameron Green and Matthew Wade to lead the team in the must-win match.

Finch took no part in Australia's final pre-game training session yesterday evening, having earlier been put through his paces to test his injured hamstring.

In his pre-match media conference held prior to that training session, he claimed he would have no hesitation in ruling himself out of his team's must-win match if he was likely to be inconvenienced in any way by the injury.

"If I feel like one per cent would be compromising the side's performance, then I won't play," he said on match eve.

Wade has skippered Australia in six T20 internationals, most notably during the five-match series in Bangladesh last year where his team slumped to a 1-4 defeat at the hands of the hosts.

Green played the most recent of his seven T20Is for Australia last month against England, where he opened alongside David Warner against England in Perth but was dismissed for one.

However, the 23-year-old can claim two half-centuries from his six innings as an Australia opener at an extraordinary strike rate of almost 189 per 100 balls faced.

Australia enter their first T20I meeting with Afghanistan knowing they need to post a hefty total in potentially in excess of 200 and then skittle their rivals cheaply to maintain any hope of progressing to the finals phase if – as is expected – England defeat Sri Lanka tomorrow.

New Zealand all-but guaranteed they would finish top of Group 1 with a 35-run win over Ireland in the earlier game at Adelaide Oval today, with their already superior net run rate further benefiting from another comfortable victory.

Entering their respective final Super 12 matches, Australia carried a net run rate of -0.304 while England's stands at +0.547, with that number calculated by taking a team’s average run rate from each game in the tournament and subtracting the average runs per over scored against them.

Australia's is comparatively poor quotient is due directly to the thumping 89-run loss they suffered at the hands of NZ in their opening Super 12s match at Sydney.

"We knew for the rest of the tournament it would come down to run rate should things go well," Finch said yesterday.

"But first and foremost we need to get the two points," Finch said yesterday of Australia's predicament

Afghanistan are searching for their first win of a World Cup in which they've been cursed by poor weather more than most rival teams, and enter this game as the only one of the 16 outfits in the overall tournament not to have recorded at least one victory.

Having lost their opening game to England at Perth, their games against New Zealand and Ireland in Melbourne were both washed out without a ball bowled and they were comfortably beaten by Sri Lanka at the Gabba earlier this week.

"The New Zealand match was (going to be) a challenge for us, and against Ireland – I'm not saying that Ireland was an easy side – but we think we missed two points there," Afghanistan assistant coach Raees Ahmadza said yesterday.

"And to be honest, it was very sad against Sri Lanka.

"You would think that we would beat them, but we were short a few runs there.

"With two washed-out matches we lost that momentum in the tournament."

Men's T20 World Cup 2022

Australia squad: Ashton Agar, Pat Cummins, Tim David, Aaron Finch (c), Cameron Green, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Marsh, Glenn Maxwell, Kane Richardson, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Marcus Stoinis, Matthew Wade, David Warner, Adam Zampa

Australia's fixtures

Oct 22: Lost to New Zealand by 89 runs

Oct 25: Beat Sri Lanka by seven wickets

Oct 28: Match abandoned v England

Oct 31: Beat Ireland by 42 runs

Nov 4: v Afghanistan, Adelaide Oval, 7pm AEDT

Click here for the full 2022 T20 World Cup fixture