Bengaluru: A surprise selection in the first T20I, Australia’s Peter Handscomb says he wants to don the gloves in ODIs too and is willing to work on his fitness to manage the workload of wicket-keeping and batting in the middle order.
Handscomb was picked ahead of regular wicket-keeper Alex Carey in the first T20I against India at Visakhapatnam, giving a boost to his hopes of making Australia’s World Cup squad. “I can keep and all, I just need to make sure I’m fit enough and strong enough that if we keep first in a 50-over game I can still go out there and bat at four or five and make sure I’m still running hard between the wickets and doing everything right by the team,” Handscomb said.
Carey is likely to be back in the team for the five-match ODI series but Handscomb wants to continue donning the gloves during rest of the tour if given a chance. “T20 is not too bad, it’s sort of over and done with pretty quickly. One-dayers can be a bit tougher. Especially in India with a bit of heat and up to the stumps a lot more on spinning wickets. So it can be tough but it’s something I am looking forward to having a crack at.”
Handscomb worked with assistant coach and World Cup-winning wicketkeeper Brad Haddin during limited-overs tours to India and New Zealand in 2017 and he credited him for improving his glovework. “Hadds is great,” Handscomb said. “We actually did a bit of work together, a couple of years ago, maybe a year and a half ago. That put me on the right path with my keeping. We found a little routine that I can do at training or before a game that just gets me going, gets me ready to keep, whether I’ve been training a lot or I haven’t been.”
Australia had beaten India by three wickets in the first T20I. The two team will play the second T20I at Bangalore Wednesday.