Australia’s home away from home World Cup

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If this is India’s home World Cup, then for Australia’s cricketers it is something like playing one at the office.

So strong are the centrifugal forces pulling cricket towards India’s huge population and hive of economic activity, most of Pat Cummins’ team spend more time there than anywhere else around the world.

The countdown is over. Captains pose for a photo before the 2023 ICC World Cup.Credit: International Cricket Council

And though the tournament begins on Thursday night with England facing New Zealand in a reprise of the 2019 decider, it is Australia’s match-up with India on Sunday in Chennai that many observers see as the major meeting of the opening round. A hamstring complaint for Marcus Stoinis is Australia’s one injury concern.

While frequent national tours – two this year and at least once every two years – form part of the picture, the annual and expanding behemoth of the Indian Premier League has also welcomed a generation of Australian players through.

This year, Cameron Green’s $3 million deal with Mumbai means that by tournament’s end he will have spent almost half of 2023 in India, having also been here for the tour in February and March.

Among older players, the likes of David Warner and Glenn Maxwell, in particular, have made their names as much in India as anywhere else. Their profiles rival the days when, on arrival in India, an answer in the affirmative about your Australian nationality was instantly met by the reply of “Aha, Ricky Ponting!”

Australia’s four ODI World Cup-winning captains: Ricky Ponting (2003, 2007), Michael Clarke (2015), Allan Border (1987) and Steve Waugh (1999).Credit: Dallas Kilponen

As Maxwell put it this week: “You’re used to the culture, you used to the little intricacies that come with being over here, and it doesn’t feel as much of a home advantage as it did in past years. There’s guys here who’ve had more than 10 tours to India, and probably upwards of three months every year here, so it’s not as foreign.”

In addition to his IPL exploits, Warner has also ventured into Indian business. The St Andrews Beach Brewery, of which Warner is a director, recently unveiled a venture to produce, market and distribute their beers in India.

Undoubtedly, the sense of India being the centre of the cricket universe is enhanced by playing games to packed grounds, none bigger than the monolithic Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. Former captain Aaron Finch said that the familiarity of such backdrops would be beneficial.

“I always found as a player that knowing what to expect when you turn up to the ground is a big thing,” Finch told this masthead from Hyderabad. “Even just where you sit in the change room, where you warm up, things that you don’t tend to think about, but they always made my mind just a little bit calmer.

“If you turn up to a ground for the first time it is a bit of a scramble. Guys are trying to figure out where to sit, and so you’re always a little more at ease once you’ve done it a few times.”

Indian cricket followers have plenty of love but also respect for Australia’s players, especially when it comes to white ball cricket. That’s because over the past decade or more, no team has played India more often or pressed them harder on home soil – since 2013, Australia have won 10 and lost 14 matches against the hosts, meaning Sunday’s first meeting in Chennai is no sure thing for Rohit Sharma’s men.

Over the past 40 years, no nation has dominated World Cups like Australia: wins in 1987, 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2015 were all characterised by aggression with the bat, speed with the ball and agility in the field. Even in a world now dominated by T20 franchise leagues, they are the sort of match-winning qualities that endure.

“There’s a couple of the boys that were there in 2015, which obviously gives us confidence,” Cummins said in Ahmedabad. “One day cricket is a format that’s really suited Australian teams of the past.

“Not only taking the game on with the batting and having some good quick bowlers, but even in the field, that early 2000s era I grew up watching, they were amazing, really athletic. So hopefully we can carry it on.”

David Warner and Glenn Maxwell at the 2019 World Cup.Credit: AP

Maxwell is one member of the group who experienced 2015, winning the Cup in Australia and capping it all with a commanding display against New Zealand in the final at the MCG. He felt bleaker emotions in 2019, grappling with the demands of the Justin Langer regime and his own high expectations as Australia qualified strongly for the semis before they were knocked out by England.

That day at Edgbaston, Maxwell felt it was his time to win the game for Australia after an indifferent tournament, only to pop a Jofra Archer knuckleball to cover. “I was like ‘this is it, this is my day’,” Maxwell told the Ordineroli Speaking podcast in 2020. “I remember seeing this ball in the air and just going ‘no, it can’t all be over, it just can’t be, this is it, this is the day’.“

Four years on, Maxwell, Warner and their teammates have a new day ahead of them, and the opportunity to make good on all the time and experience they have invested in India. It’s not a home World Cup, but a home away from home.

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