Andrew McDonald has pushed back on suggestions the home summer’s Ashes series compromised his side’s preparation for the T20 World Cup with Australia to exit the tournament following Friday’s final group stage match against Oman.
The Australian head coach said they’d been “fully locked into (the T20 World Cup) for a period of time”, with the side playing 16 T20 internationals last year in the five months prior to the Ashes kicking off in late November.
They won 10 of 13 completed matches in 2025 (with three washed out) with predominately the same group that has seen Australia eliminated from the T20 World Cup at the group stage for the first time in almost 17 years.
“This is one of our priorities,” McDonald said on the eve of his side’s final Group B match against Oman.
“I have heard of that sort of narrative that T20 World Cups don’t matter to us. I think all that is, is the response (externally) to the performances of Australian cricket teams in these competitions.
“We won the one in 2021 and we haven’t been as successful since that point in time. The expectations on the Australian cricket team are high, and rightfully so.
“But to sit back and say that we’re prioritising other formats or other versions of the game and not the T20 World Cup is entirely false.”
There was a crossover of just four players between the Ashes and T20 World Cup squads – Travis Head, Cameron Green, Josh Inglis and later Steve Smith, who was added to the World Cup 15 on Monday as cover for captain Mitch Marsh as he recovered from a painful testicular injury.
There were initially two more all-format players named in Australia’s World Cup squad but injuries to Josh Hazlewood (hamstring and Achillies) and Pat Cummins (back) forced them out of the tournament, having also sidelined Hazlewood for the entire Ashes series and limited Cummins to one Test.
“Have we had some challenges on the back of injuries from players on the back of Test series? That’s always something we deal with, and every nation has to deal with it,” McDonald said.
“It’s very difficult to be high performing across three formats.
“I think that’s been one of the strengths of this group. We have done that for a long period of time, and we focus on and prioritise every format, and at times, things cross over and definitely get in the way in terms of injuries and workload.
“But we we’re gearing up to have those players that have been mentioned (Hazlewood and Cummins) that aren’t here to be here, and unfortunately, they weren’t able to make this tournament.
“Does that make a difference to your performance? In some ways yes, but I truly believe that the players that we here were good enough and it shouldn’t be about the players that we’re missing.
“It should be looking at the performances of what we’ve been able to put out here; we’re disappointed in those; we need to own those; and the critique is fair and reasonable.”
Missing just Head, Marcus Stoinis and recent T20 international debutant Matthew Renshaw, Australia whitewashed West Indies in a five-match series last year. They then beat South Africa 2-1 with the return of Head but minus Cooper Connolly and Xavier Bartlett, while Stoinis returned for their 2-0 series win over New Zealand in October.
But a disjointed build-up to the World Cup meant they only assembled their full squad in Sri Lanka just over a week out from their first game with Tim David and Nathan Ellis recovering from injuries suffered in the Big Bash, while Glenn Maxwell was managed for the three-match Pakistan tour where the side was smashed three-nil.
“It’s a little bit like (leading) into the Test Summer; we played a couple of guys in (Sheffield) Shield cricket leading into that and we lost them due to injury,” McDonald said.
“We like our players playing our domestic competition and T20 (matches) running into a T20 World Cup is advantageous as a whole.
“We had a very condensed period to prepare for that (Pakistan) tour.
“Going in the day before for a Pakistan series, and this is not excuses; we had the BBL finals and we had some injured players, so it was very difficult to get the World Cup group together there to start to plan and prepare.
“We were underprepared for that series. We didn’t improve across those three games.
“But there were different personnel, different challenges and the surfaces in Pakistan, people say they’re similar to here, (but) I think they’re slightly different.”
Once the squad arrives back in Australia after the Oman game (Saturday, 12.30am AEDT), McDonald said planning would start for the next men’s T20 World Cup that they will co-host with New Zealand in 2028, just four months after cricket returns to the Olympics through the T20 format.
But with a bumper period of Test cricket (with at least 20 matches scheduled in just over 12 months) and an ODI World Cup on the horizon in 2027, Australia’s T20 schedule is light until the 12 months prior to that 2028 tournament.
“In the next 12 months, we’ll have a lack of T20 cricket, as is the way of the schedule,” McDonald said.
“We go to Bangladesh and we’ve got a series against England.
“They won’t really ramp up until pretty much that World Cup year, which is similar to what happened in this cycle.
“That’s probably not enough to start to build out what your direction is, I think that’ll come a little bit closer.
“The build into this tournament and the style of cricket, the balance of our batting unit and the balance of our bowling attack, we felt really confident coming into this tournament.
“I think the decisions that we made and the squad that we picked, we’ve got a room full of players that are incredibly disappointed knowing that they were good enough to progress, and we’ve just got to own the fact that we haven’t.”
2026 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup
Australia squad: Mitch Marsh (c), Xavier Bartlett, Cooper Connolly, Tim David, Ben Dwarshuis, Cameron Green, Nathan Ellis, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Matthew Kuhnemann, Glenn Maxwell, Matthew Renshaw, Steve Smith, Marcus Stoinis, Adam Zampa. Travelling reserve: Sean Abbott
Australia’s Group Stage fixtures
February 11: beat Ireland by 67 runs
February 13: lost to Zimbabwe by 23 runs
February 16: lost to Sri Lanka by eight wickets
February 20: v Oman, Pallekele International Stadium, Kandy (Feb 21, 12:30am AEDT)
Click here for the full tournament schedule
All matches will be broadcast on Amazon’s Prime Video
