Australia look to familiar blueprint in bid for back-to-back T20 World Cup titles

For decade upon decade, Australian selectors have leant to the conventional. Three quicks and a spinner, your best bat is captain, wicketkeeper at seven in Test cricket or pushed up to throw the bat as an opener in the shorter forms. Occasionally circumstances or an unusual player might shift this around, but it tends to quickly revert to the mean.

Having George Bailey in charge has led to an occasional willingness to be different. His days as a player and captain showed that, and those days are recent enough that he personally knows the strengths of most current players. It was Bailey’s plan to have Scott Boland play in last year’s MCG Ashes Test, a masterstroke as Boland hoovered up wickets at an 1880s bowling average over the next three matches. There has been talk of picking batters for next year’s India tour based on strength against spin rather than incumbency, in a departure from failed orthodoxy. It has indeed been an unusual combination of circumstance and player that led to fast bowler Pat Cummins taking charge of the Test and one-day teams, but that would not likely have happened with a traditionalist chairing the selection meetings.

Still, for the T20 World Cup about to start, Bailey doesn’t have to do much other than press copy and paste from last year’s corresponding tournament. He can do so in the confidence that home conditions should, in theory, suit them and their style of play far better than the surfaces of the Arabian Gulf, where Australia’s quick bowlers went against orthodoxy and odds to take the tournament.

Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood took 25 of the 41 wickets to fall to Australia on UAE pitches that ranged from slow to flat. This year their group stage will form a tour of the