Bowling a bonus, but Henriques wants to impress with bat

Australia has arrived for the Champions Trophy 2017 with a strong side headlined by the most exciting pace attack in the competition, but not lacking batting meat either. It makes for an interesting situation for someone like Moises Henriques, who is a batsman who bowls seam-up.

Henriques certainly did his chances of adding to eight One-Day International caps no harm by taking 3 for 46 in the warm-up match against Sri Lanka in eight overs, but he emphasised in Birmingham on Wednesday, that he had been picked due to his batting more than his bowling.

“My selection (in the squad) was definitely on the back of my batting in white-ball cricket over the last two or three years,” he said at Edgbaston. “Trevor (Hohns, the national selector) was pretty clear in his message that was the reason for selection and that’s why I was confident and not so surprised that I was picked, because the runs were on the board. But they haven’t been there at international level yet, so I’m really keen to get out there and start performing and winning games for Australia. We all know playing cricket for your country asks a lot more questions than domestic cricket.”

One of the talking points of Australia’s squad was the absence of James Faulkner, the Man of the Match when Australia beat New Zealand in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 final. But Henriques said it had been made clear to him that he wouldn’t be looked at as someone who could do the role Faulkner did.

“I don’t think James’s role will get filled by me. That is possibly more for someone like John Hastings or Marcus Stoinis,” he said. “That’s certainly the message that I got delivered from the selectors, that I wasn’t there to replace James. My job was to perform as a top six batsman and what I do with the ball will be a bonus. I’m pretty aware of what my role is in the team if I do play. James was probably more of a bowling-dominated all-rounder who chipped in with the bat in the lower order.”

But while emphasising that bowling was his second suit, Henriques also said that he was still looking for improvements in the discipline, even after his showing against Sri Lanka, where no other Australian bowler picked more than one wicket. “I guess it was nice to pick up a few wickets and keep the runs down a little bit, but even with my performance I still found there was a couple of things I could have done better,” he felt. “I’m sure every bowler can look back at a performance and over the space of – mine was 48 balls but some guys bowled 10 overs – there will always be balls that you feel you could have executed a bit better than you did.”
Funnily enough, some part of Henriques’s selection may well have had to do with events not in his control, when Mitchell Marsh was injured. Acknowledging Marsh’s contributions, Henriques put his selection in perspective by saying that while no one liked to benefit from a teammate’s misfortune, he had been confident in his own performance and ability to earn the call-up.

“I wasn’t surprised to get the call. I was more surprised a couple of tours that I didn’t get the call, to be honest. That’s not in a bad way, but I’m always hopeful of getting picked and feel like if I’m given the opportunity I can do well and play well for Australia,” he explained.

“To be fair I thought Mitch Marsh has played quite well, especially in one-day cricket he has batted really well for Australia. Unfortunately he’s injured for this tournament, but I feel he’s contributed a lot to the Australian team in the middle order in the last 18 months,” he continued. “You never want to get picked in a team on someone else’s misfortune, but there was definitely an opportunity there with him missing out. And because I’ve been going more towards the role of a batting allrounder, I was hopeful of picking up a spot as a batsman or a batting all-rounder at some stage.”