Travis Head injury a cause of concern for Australia ahead of Boxing Day Test

Ahead of the Boxing Day Test against India, Australia are sweating on the availability of their star batsman Travis Head. The left-hander has proven to be a big headache for India across formats in the past 12 months and has scored centuries at Adelaide and Brisbane. With the series poised 1-1, Australia are hoping Head would be available to take the field at the MCG.
According to reports from Down Under, Travis Head is in doubt to play because of a quad strain as Australia head coach Andrew McDonald remained hopeful that he would clear the fitness test.
“There’s no concern at the moment,” McDonald said. “Has Travis Head been officially ticked off? I’m not sure. I didn’t see the sort of back end of his training session there, but I’m pretty confident he’ll play. It’ll just be basically what risk is associated with that. He had a small strain to the quad. But no concerns from my end, he’s been able to do his running, so I think it’d be fully functional come game time,” he added.
Travis Head who chose not to train on Monday, had a short stint on Tuesday, and received throwdowns for 20 minutes before having a long conversation with McDonald and physio Nick Jones before heading back to the dressing room.
So far in this Border-Gavaskar Trophy, Head has scored 409 runs at an average of 81.80 as India’s attack has struggled to keep the left-hander in control. Though the rest of Australia batsmen continued to be troubled Jasprit Bumrah, Head has been an exception to it.
In case Travis Head doesn’t clear the fitness test, Australia’s white-ball keeper Josh Inglis is likely to come in as a batter for his Test debut.
McDonald has also confirmed that opener Sam Konstas would make his debut in place of Nathan McSweeney at the MCG.

Why should you buy our Subscription?

You want to be the smartest in the room.
You want access to our award-winning journalism.
You don’t want to be misled and misinformed.

Choose your subscription package