Bowlers lead the way for Australia

AUSTRALIAN batsman Travis Head is confident a new-look bowling attack will have the “firepower” to trouble England in an upcoming one-day international series.

Head made a century as Australia completed its preparations with a 101run win over Middlesex at Lord’s yesterday. Despite his 106, Australia was held to a total of 6-283. It was the second time in two warm-up games the Aussies had failed to reach the benchmark score of 300, having made 9-277 against Sussex at Hove in their tour opener on Thursday.

But they still beat Sussex by 57 runs and the bowlers were even more dominant against Middlesex, which slumped to 182 all out with nine overs to spare. Middlesex was, however, without star batsman Eoin Morgan as the England 50-over captain led the national side in a one-day international against Scotland in Edinburgh.

World Cup holder Australia suffered a 4-1 series loss at home to England, now top of the global ODI standings, earlier this year.

The tourists will likely need to raise their game when a five-match series with England starts across London at The Oval on Wednesday, but Head was unconcerned by their recent failure to break the 300 barrier.

“It depends, if we bowl the way we have … we’ll find that out pretty quickly, what’s a good score,” Head said.

“The last two games have been good enough. We were under the pump at Hove but we were pretty clinical in the way we went about it here.”

The 24-year-old opened the batting yesterday, with Australia having arrived in England without regular opener David Warner and former captain Steve Smith after the pair were given year-long bans for their roles in March’s ball-tampering scandal in Cape Town.

Australia is also without injured fast-bowling trio Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood.