Lee injured as Australia lose warm-up to Zimbabwe
After an embarrassing exit from last year’s World Twenty20 in the group stage, Australia’s one-run loss to Zimbabwe in a warm-up match for this year’s competition must have sent a collective shudder through Michael Clarke’s team.
Depending on your perspective, the news gets worse for Australia too, with pace spearhead Brett Lee ruled out of the World Twenty20 after straining a muscle in his right arm during the match. Lee’s exit opens the door for either Doug Bollinger or Ryan Harris to join the team in the Caribbean, and that may just turn out to be a positive for Australia’s World Twenty20 chances based on the current form of all concerned.
Perhaps the loss can be dismissed as a product of the unpredictability of Twenty20 cricket; maybe though it’s a result that will give Sri Lanka and New Zealand, Zimbabwe’s Group B opponents, some pause for thought before the real deal begins on April 30th.
For Lee though it ends any hopes he had harboured of playing in the main competition this year after spending the Australian summer recovering from elbow surgery, which the 33-year-old underwent late last year.
On what could only have been reputation rather than form, and Lee has earned that privilege after years of intimidating opposition batsmen for Australia, the New South Welshman was named in the World Twenty20 squad.
The aim would have been for Lee to play himself into form for the Kings XI Punjab in the IPL, but four wicketless matches and one broken thumb later all that the New South Welshman had succeeded in doing was raising more questions about his place in the squad.
Would he recover from this latest injury setback in time for the World Twenty20 (yes) and would he be the strike bowler who had served Australia so reliably in the past (we’ll never know)?
Now we are left to wonder whether this latest injury setback will spell the end of a distinguished international career for Lee, who retired from Test cricket earlier in the year in a bid to prolong his career in the shorter forms of the game.
Luckily for Australia, in Bollinger and Harris, they have two worthy replacements ready to pack their bags and fly out to the West Indies. It’s just a matter of choosing between the two.
Both seamers proved their value in the IPL, with Bollinger especially making an immediate impact upon his arrival at the Chennai Super Kings mid-series, snaring 12 wickets in eight games for the IPL champions.
It’s a performance that, coupled with the fact Bollinger’s bowling was a revelation for Australia over their home summer, should now earn the seamer a place among Australia’s squad in the Caribbean.
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