The Australian team are all set to defend their World Test Championship (WTC) mace against South Africa this week at Lord's. However, ahead of the big clash reports have emerged of the Australian preparations hitting a bump. As reported by Australian media, Pat Cummins and Co. were not allowed to train at the venue on Saturday, which forced the unit to make a three-hour trip to find an alternate and appropriate training venue. The development was reported by Fox Cricket, which mentioned that the team was informed that the ground "was not available for training sessions".
It cited another report from Code Sports, which stated that while the Australian players were denied permission, the Lord's authorities had allowed India to use the facility for a training session. Both India and Australia are present in England at the moment as the former prepares for a five-match Test series against the hosts, also marking the beginning of a brand new cycle of WTC.
The report further mentioned that Australia were, however, given full access to train at the venue on Sunday.
If we compare the schedule of both teams, the WTC final between Australia and South Africa begins from Wednesday, whereas India play their first Test on June 20. In fact both India and England will only meet at Lord's for the third Test, which is scheduled to be played on July 10.
South Africa confident of an upset
Meanwhile, South Africa go into the five-day clash at Lord’s as underdogs but coach Shukri Conrad struck an optimistic tone at the press conference on Monday. "The inexperience is very apparent in terms of the number of Tests played and their place in the ICC rankings. So, I think it's pretty normal that the chat is all about the bowlers when you've got guys like Kagiso Rabada, ranked two in the world, and Marco (Jansen) and (spinner) Keshav (Maharaj)," he said.
"But I think there's a quiet confidence among the batting group. They got a lot of confidence, with hundreds for different players at different stages. So yeah, while there might not be superstar names among them, I think as a collective we’re pretty confident."
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