Fast bowler Mitchell Starc will be wrapped in cotton wool and won’t play any part in NSW’s Sheffield Shield title push before he departs for Australia’s World Twenty20 campaign next month.
Starc has been omitted from the Blues team to take on Victoria at the SCG from Wednesday as the shield season resumes following the Big Bash League hiatus.
And he won’t be eligible for NSW’s clash against the Western Warriors at the WACA next week either, with Cricket Australia eager to limit his workload ahead of the national team’s departure to play World Twenty20 warm-up internationals in South Africa starting on March 6.
The 24-year-old Starc has only bowled 10.2 overs across three Twenty20 games since returning from stress fractures which kept him out of the Ashes series, and CA are wary of too much in the longer format too soon.
“I think the ropes are a bit tied on him at the moment,” said NSW quick Doug Bollinger.
A softly-softly approach will also be taken with Pat Cummins, as CA look to keep the injury-prone NSW fast bowler on the field for a sustained period of time.
Both Starc and Cummins are expected to play grade cricket over the coming weeks, while their second-placed NSW teammates strive to break their seven-season Sheffield Shield drought.
Starc is a key man in Australia’s 15-player squad for Bangladesh, but unlucky to miss out was his NSW stablemate Josh Hazlewood.
The right-armer starred alongside Starc in Australia’s thumping of England in the T20s in January, but makes way for Test seamer Mitchell Johnson.
A shin injury ruled Hazlewood out of all but one game of the first half of the Shield season and also ended his hopes of being considered for a Test call-up.
Alongside the in-form Bollinger and Trent Copeland, Hazlewood is eager to make an impression against last-placed Victoria – as NSW look to stay a step ahead of a congested chasing shield pack.
“The injury took quite a long time to get over. It’s fine now and Big Bash was a good time to slowly build up the overs,” said Hazlewood.
“There was a lot of cricket around that time and other fast bowlers did quite well … so it was a pretty important time to be playing.
“A couple of wins will put us very close to the Shield finals so that’s what we’re looking to do.”
Victorian veterans Cameron White (second-highest Shield run-scorer) and David Hussey will play their 100th first-class matches for the Bushrangers, putting them equal seventh on the all-time list.
NSW: Peter Nevill (capt), Doug Bollinger, Sean Abbott, Ryan Carters, Trent Copeland, Josh Hazlewood, Scott Henry, Nic Maddinson, Steve O’Keefe, Kurtis Patterson, Ben Rohrer, Gurinder Sandhu
Victoria: Matthew Wade (capt), Scott Boland, Dan Christian, Aaron Finch, Peter Handscomb, John Hastings, David Hussey, Clint McKay, Glenn Maxwell, James Muirhead, Marcus Stoinis, Cameron White
