Australia’s veteran fast bowler Josh Hazlewood has been ruled out of the upcoming T20 World Cup as he has failed to attain full fitness ahead of the tournament. Hazlewood had also missed the all-important Ashes against England due to injury.
Hazlewood’s absence will be a huge blow for Australia as Pat Cummins is already out of the competition. The lanky pacer scalped 22 wickets in 12 matches of IPL 2025 while playing for Royal Challengers Bengaluru and thus played an instrumental role in taking the franchise to their maiden title.
Australia selector Tony Dodemaide said the management had been hopeful of Hazlewood’s return by the Super 8 stage but felt the risks was not worth taking. “We were hopeful Josh would be back to match fitness by the Super 8 stage but the latest indications he is still some time away and accelerating his program will carry too much risk.”
Australia will not name a replacement immediately, as selectors will take a call after looking at the conditions.
“We will not be naming a replacement player immediately. We feel we are well covered for the initial games so will make any later decisions based on priority need at the time,” Dodemaide added.
On the other hand, Mitchell Marsh, the T20I skipper, is optimistic about the pace attack despite the absence of big names.
“One of the great things about Pat and Josh especially, all being three-format players, is that we’ve been able to build a lot of depth within our squad and the guys that have come in have played a lot of cricket for our group,” Marsh said. “So we’ve got a lot of confidence in them (the other pacers) to go out there and do the job when required and then we’ll just pick teams based on the conditions.
“Matthew Kuhnemann has been great for us, we’ve also got Adam Zampa and then we’ve got a few spinning allrounders, like most teams will. So I think we’ve got all bases covered and now it’s just about getting stuck into it.
“Over the last 18 months, I feel we’ve been one of the most consistent sides in the world. We come to this World Cup really confident, knowing that conditions will be different at times, but we’ve got guys that have experienced that all over the world. So we look forward to the challenge of playing against everyone,” added Marsh.
Australia begins its T20 World Cup campaign against Ireland on 11th February at Colombo.
