Cam Green should leave bowling actions to umpires. Australia’s T20 team has bigger problems

Cameron Green’s petulant gesture about the unusual bowling action of Pakistan’s Usman Tariq was a worrying sign for Australia at the start of a Twenty20 World Cup campaign.

Not because of Tariq’s action, which has been cleared twice by testing procedures sanctioned by the International Cricket Council, but because Green was clearly looking elsewhere for excuses as to why he and Australia had been battered twice in as many games on foreign soil.

After being dismissed for 35 during Australia’s failed run chase on Saturday, Green unflatteringly mimicked Tariq’s side-arm, slinging delivery method.

To question a bowler’s action so publicly is poor form when there is an established process for dealing with such matters, whereby umpires report the bowler and a testing protocol is followed.

Tariq left little doubt as to what he thought of Green’s complaint after his team’s 90-run win, posting an Instagram story on Sunday that strongly suggested the tall all-rounder had spat the dummy after being dismissed.

What’s more, Green need only have looked around his own dressing room to know how tough it can be for a teammate to have aspersions cast on their legitimacy as a bowler.

This time last year, the left-arm spinner Matt Kuhnemann was cited by umpires after rumours swirled around Galle of Sri Lankan suspicions about the bowling action of the man who had spun out the hosts in consecutive Test matches.

Australia were advised of the report on Kuhnemann as they should have been celebrating a 2-0 Test series win, and the process by which the bowler cleared his name took several laborious weeks to complete.

Later, Kuhnemann spoke to this masthead about the toll it took.

“I was always confident I was going to be fine, but I knew there was going to be a bit of noise in the public for a week or so,” he said. “I have thickish skin, so that didn’t really bother me, but does it have to be so public? I’m not sure. There are probably better ways.”

There were certainly better ways for Australia to perform with both bat and ball in the warm-up series against Pakistan, on slow and low surfaces that provided some hard lessons about how to compete in the looming World Cup.

Australia’s batting is heavy on hitters but relatively light on players with the level of craft to find more than one way to chase a target or set a winning total. It’s spectacular when it works, but pretty ugly when it fails, as was the case in Lahore, where the visitors lost all 10 wickets fell to spin on their way to a paltry 108 in reply to Pakistan’s 5-198.

Steve Smith, with a string of sparkling Big Bash League displays behind him, is on standby in the event of an injury, and it is hard to see the Australian line-up being poorer for his inclusion in the squad. Perhaps not as an opener in place of Mitchell Marsh or Travis Head, but as a classy middle order player with the capability to answer questions posed by Tariq and his compatriots.

This notion was made more apposite by the sage observations of spin bowler Adam Zampa, who outlined how conditions are likely to shift across the Cup. Australia start their campaign in Sri Lanka before moving on to India.

“If anything, the challenge in Pakistan is the low bounce; in Sri Lanka it probably spins and bounces a little bit more,” Zampa said after game one.

“Tonight, I think the challenge was definitely slow off the wicket, and then the low bounce gets you on the bottom of the bat. It’s pretty alien for some of the young guys, particularly, in the group.

“The conditions will change throughout the World Cup. The first stage of the tournament, particularly in Sri Lanka, the spinners will play a huge role, but it’ll change, definitely in India, where my experience is that it’s totally different – good batting wickets, as you’ve seen in the latest series with New Zealand there.”

In other words, adaptability will be vital. There has already been some kind of concession in that direction by the selectors when they chose to leave out Matt Short and replace him with the more versatile Matt Renshaw, but Smith’s skills look still more useful to the cause after two batting blowouts in Pakistan.

Green, certainly, should look inward for ways to improve, rather than lashing out at Tariq. Similarly, the young all-rounder Cooper Connolly has a lot of learning to do if he’s to prove himself capable of making an impact on the tournament.

While often a star on home soil, Connolly has so far played 11 internationals overseas across formats, with a grand total of 21 runs at 3.5 from six innings and two wickets at 91.5 runs apiece. The only way is up, and there will be opportunities aplenty in this format.

By being played every two years, the T20 World Cup comes around so frequently that the lustre of the trophy has been somewhat dimmed. For evidence of that look no further than the decision to rest Pat Cummins from the tournament – he will instead be fit and ready to go for the Indian Premier League that follows it.

Without Cummins, the onus will be on Josh Hazlewood to take up the slack for Australia. There are bigger issues than unusual bowling actions to contend with.

Australia’s first game of the 2026 T20 World Cup will be played against Ireland in Colombo on February 11.

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