Glenn Maxwell is restless. He is one of four Australian players who’s jumped on the team bus for the 35-minute drive to the Windward Cricket Club in the inland parish of St. Phillip. It’s an optional session and Maxwell is joined by Ashton Agar, Marcus Stoinis and Cameron Green. It’s a cloudy morning with intermittent showers.
And after around 40 minutes of traditional fickleness with the Barbados weather, the mizzle, which had alternated between a wavy shower and the gentle spray, had settled into a rather heavy downpour. As it turned out, just when the make-shift ground-staff had managed to put the make-shift centre-wicket nets up. Maxwell had stood around with his pads on in the company of Agar waiting to hit a few balls to kick off his stint. He’d spent that time entertaining himself with some by-play with the left-arm spinner, pretending to pad balls that Agar was tossing at him. But now, he had to jog off, while shielding his bat from getting wet, visibly annoyed with being made to wait even longer.
Maxwell had landed only a day earlier after flight delays had led to his journey from Australia, where he’d spent two days at home, being extended to nearly 60 hours. And following one of his least fruitful IPL seasons, the enigmatic Australian all-rounder was bursting at the seams to get his World Cup campaign officially underway. This was Sunday (June 2), three days out from Australia’s opener against Oman at the Kensington Oval.
You could hear him egging on the ground-staff to get the covers off the moment it stopped raining and doing the same to the coaching staff to help him get out to the middle and be able to get bat on ball. Once out there, Maxwell wasted no time in trying to smash the ball to as many parts of the slightly unkempt ground as he could. He wasn’t always the most successful, with the pitch a tad tacky and the balls being a bit too soft because of all the water around. Unlike his Royal Challengers Bengaluru teammate, Cameron Green, who almost from the first ball he faced began launching some balls into the wind and on to the grandstand of the clubhouse, and others into the Chattel houses on the outskirts of the Oval to the western side.
Green had arrived a day before Maxwell did. He’d woken up elated at the start of the day because the bag of his that had been misplaced during his flight, the one with all the cricket gear, had arrived in time for him to not miss even a single training session.
His journey as he would reveal was a more manageable 38 hours to get here. A day later, this time at the 3Ws Oval, Green would not have a very lengthy hit, having pulled up a bit sore after having spent nearly 90 minutes putting on a power-hitting show at Windward.
But on Sunday, you couldn’t take your eyes off the towering Western Australian as he executed big shot after big shot, getting into some very strong power-base positions, some of which he’d practiced through the IPL with RCB batting coach Neil McKenzie.
This was Green being the intimidating menace that many had touted him to be when he burst onto the scene a few summers ago. Albeit against some local spinners and the coaches with sidearms. It wasn’t so much what he was doing but the presence he seemed to be creating with bat in hand, just like he did towards the latter half of the IPL. An invaluable experience he couldn’t stop raving about on Monday (June 3) at the 3Ws Oval.
“I think that’s the beauty of what I’ve been exposed to in the last few years. And the beauty of the IPL. It’s not always been a consistent spot that I’ve locked in. But at the same time, I’m also thankful for that. I feel like I can jump in at many different roles. I think that’s where I see myself this tournament. Maybe plugging holes in the team. It’s a pretty good team to get into. Wherever I get told I’m playing, I’ve got a bit of confidence and an idea where I can bat anywhere,” he said.
While his adapting to the new role down the order and with the ball was one of the highlights of RCB’s dramatic turnaround in the IPL, Green has been managed carefully by the Australian selectors when it comes to helping him transition more comfortably from the shortest format to Test cricket, even if it means resting him from some T20I series. When asked about whether that could be a sign of the future, Green was quick to note, “Maybe in the future, it’ll be about picking or choosing a game here or there. You love being around these guys. You never want to spend too much time away from them.”
It’s a sentiment that seems to sum up this current Australian team though. The togetherness and bonhomie comes across very much as being genuine. A team that seems very united under their leadership group, which in the Caribbean is led by Mitchell Marsh. A common familial bond shared by every member of the side and targeted towards the common goal of becoming the first men’s team to complete a treble or a Grand Slam by holding all three major world trophies at the same time.
You could almost picture it then when Agar began describing the Australian team together on the roof of a catamaran on Saturday as they enjoyed the stunning sight of the sun setting over the Caribbean Sea.
“We were sitting on the roof of the catamaran as we were coming back last night and ‘Stoin’ (Marcus Stoinis) actually mentioned that, ‘I don’t know if many other teams would be like this’. You’ve got all the boys sitting on the roof watching the sun go down, having a drink together, having a genuinely good time and enjoying each other’s company. It was pretty easy to forget you’re here for a World Cup.”
It is after all easy to get swept away by the chillin’ vibe of Barbados and the Bajan way of life, which is all played out a bit in slow motion. There’s a languid ease to the pace of life in this island paradise. Where the 24-hour clock at times can seem like an incidental hindrance. And having barely spent time as a team since the end of the New Zealand tour in March, it seemed like the Australian team management had decided that it was the best time, as Agar put it, “to enjoy what the Caribbean has to offer”.
And on Sunday, coach Andrew McDonald was seen urging his handful of players in semi-jest to pack up quickly, so that they can get the bus back to the hotel for the first full-team meeting before the World Cup.
Having got the team bonding reignited and in place, Monday at the 3Ws Oval was Australia’s first full training session, attended by every member of the squad. To the extent that all 15 of them-the reserves are yet to arrive-had a bat in the three nets in the middle, some taking turns, with Matthew Wade the only one pulling off a Steve Smith with a second add-on session.
Like with most T20 nets sessions, this one was all about balls being smashed into orbit or batters swinging and missing and having their stumps knocked out. Captain Marsh was knocked over early in his stint by both Pat Cummins, who bowled a lot of cutters, and Mitchell Starc, who bowled full and quick. So too were David Warner by deliveries that scooted along the surface in the far net, and Wade in the nets facing Adam Zampa. It was a lively atmosphere overall, with a lot of banter mixed in with a lot of vocal admiration for the power-hitting prowess of their teammates.
Maxwell seemed to be in much better touch on Monday. And so too was Stoinis, who paired up with Tim David, to put on a fearsome display of six-hitting to the nearly 50-60 school students who’d made themselves comfortable on the grandstand above the Floyd Reifer Pavilion. There was a bit of disdain in this display as the two muscle-men of the Australian middle-order put the net bowlers and some of their own to the sword. Young local left-arm spinner DeShawn Williams was an exception and was impressive as he held his own against most of the world-class batters in the Australian team.
Travis Head, who too had only arrived recently in the Caribbean, was among the last to appear on the scene. And despite having had diminishing returns in what was an otherwise glorious IPL return, he looked at his destructive best from the moment he marked his guard. It was a session that must have lasted for around 25 minutes, and you could have mistaken Head to be in the orange Sunrisers jersey instead of the Aussie training kit. This was Travis Head the trend-setter from the first half of the IPL in full flow. The South Australian probably received the most number of acknowledgements for his explosiveness in the nets. Like in the IPL, it was his handling of the spinners on the slow, tiring pitches at 3Ws Oval that stood out the most. Especially in the way he was hanging back and knocking the ball around off the back-foot.
The most promising sign for the Aussies was the sight, late in the session, of Marsh limbering up to roll his arm over for a few deliveries, before returning a bit later for a full-fledged spell off his proper run. This was the first time he’d done so since arriving in the West Indies.
The laughter and the enthusiasm continued right through the three hours in the middle, in spite of the steamy and humid conditions up the hill on the University of West Indies campus in Barbados. Whether it was when McDonald nearly copped a ball in a dangerous area after it was straight back at him at rapid speed by David, or when David claimed to have developed a new type of delivery to flummox Warner, You could sense the high energy even as they packed up, with some soca playing in the background, and started loading the mini-van with their kit-bags. Most of them will take Tuesday (June 4) off even though there is another optional session scheduled. But they’ll be ready to start their quest for the triple crown with the same energy they brought to training on Monday, against Oman.
For, Marsh and his team looks and sounds keen to take back a lot more from this trip than just what the Caribbean has to offer.
