Cameron Green set to skip series against Pakistan to prepare for India Tests

Australia allrounder Cameron Green is likely to skip the white-ball series against Pakistan later this year to prepare for the Test series against India at home. In November this year, Pakistan are set to visit Australia for a limited-overs series. Having played a three-match Test series in Australia in the 2023/24 season, the Men in Green will visit the country later this year for three T20Is and as many ODIs.

While Cameron Green certainly features prominently in Australia’s limited-overs plans, he is set to skip both the series against Pakistan. The highly-rated allrounder is set to play Sheffield Shield cricket at that time to prepare for the challenging series against India. He was recently left out of the T20I series against New Zealand as well although he is in contention to be a part of Australia’s squad for the T20 World Cup.

The Australia selectors want Cameron Green to focus solely on red-ball cricket at present and did not even call him in late when both Marcus Stoinis and Aaron Hardie were withdrawn with injury for the New Zealand assignment. He was asked to stay in Australia to play a Shield match for Western Australia against Tasmania where he made an unbeaten 103 to help WA secure a draw on the final day.

Cameron Green to focus on Tests:

Cameron Green justified the selectors’ faith in him by playing a brilliant knock of 174* runs against New Zealand in the recently concluded first Test. In a match where no other Australian batter could score a fifty, his stunning knock helped Australia thrash New Zealand by 174 runs.

“The next stress point on that’s going to be next summer leading into the Indian Test series,” Australia head coach Andrew McDonald said.

“I think it’ll be a conversation where he’s at. I’d like to probably err on the side of preparing him through red-ball. We know how good a white-ball player he is. If you put a priority on what it looks like next summer, the white-ball cricket is important but, geez, that Test summer is important.

“I think with the results he’s had out there, he’ll probably come to us and say can you give us a couple of Shield games before the first Test against India,” he added.

Speaking about the decision to leave Green out of the team for the New Zealand T20Is, McDonald said: “It’s a big decision to leave anyone out of international cricket when they’re actually potentially in the best XI.

“I was glad that [Green] embraced that when we had that conversation with him. And the return on it was pretty immediate. It’s not always going to be like that. So even if he failed here, we felt like that was his best preparation. So don’t always judge a result as making it right or wrong,” he added.

Cameron Green likely to prioritise Sheffield Shield instead of white ball series Vs Pakistan to prepare for the Boarder Gavaskar Test series. pic.twitter.com/b36dU5j6yo

— Mufaddal Vohra (@mufaddal_vohra) March 4, 2024

Australia and New Zealand will play one more Test, starting on March 7 before players from both the teams leave for India for IPL 2024. As far as Green is concerned, he is set to ply his trade for Royal Challengers Bangalore in the forthcoming IPL season, scheduled to be played from March 22.