Australia will have captain Mitchell Marsh and Travis Head as the opening pair until the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup next year.
The duo has not opened the batting in the shortest format of the game yet, but boasts an impressive record in One Day Internationals, scoring 282 runs from five innings at an average of 70.50.
“It’ll be myself and Heady [Travis Head] up the top for the foreseeable future,” Marsh told reporters. “Obviously, we’ve played a lot together, (we’ve) got a great relationship, so (we’ll) start there.”
Australia, after a 5-0 whitewash of the West Indies in the T20I series last month, will host South Africa in a three-match series, starting August 10.
Head is one of the players returning to the squad, and his record with Marsh as a batting partner reads 504 runs from 14 innings at a 38.76-run average, with one century and three half-century stands.
Since David Warner’s retirement following last year’s T20 World Cup in the Caribbean, Australia has tried and tested multiple openers, including Matt Short, Glenn Maxwell and Jake Fraser-McGurk.
But the Marsh-Head combination — well-tested in the 50-over format — looks set in stone as the team builds towards the T20 World Cup.
