MELBOURNE (Reuters) -All-rounder Cameron Green says he will be ready to return to bowling during the domestic Sheffield Shield in a boost for Australia before hosting England in the Ashes.<\/p>\n
Green has been restricted to batting since returning from a long layoff following back surgery but has been gradually building up his bowling load in training.<\/p>\n
Australia play India in a white-ball series in October and November but Green may opt for a block of red-ball cricket for Western Australia to ramp up his bowling before the Ashes.<\/p>\n
“In the past, it’s worked really well when I’ve focused on Shield cricket,” Green told reporters in Mackay on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“That potentially might be the way to go, especially with working my way back to bowling, to potentially get a few more overs over a few more days.”<\/p>\n
Australia will be wary of over-bowling Green, who missed the entire home test series against India after opting for surgery on a fracture in his lumbar spine.<\/p>\n
But if fit and firing he would be a huge asset in Australia’s bid to retain the urn against England.<\/p>\n
Green has 18 wickets in eight matches against England at an average of 24.44, compared to a career average of 35.31.<\/p>\n
More recently, it has been his contributions with the bat that have proved valuable for Australia. <\/p>\n
His 184 runs on difficult pitches during the West Indies test tour helped Pat Cummins’s team whitewash the hosts 3-0.<\/p>\n
Green said he was not reading too much into his batting form in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think we’ll be playing on many wickets quite like that (this summer), so I don’t think there’s too many takeaways,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It was such a tough wicket, especially for the batters — to …. get out of the series unscathed was a good effort.”<\/p>\n
The first Ashes test is in Perth from Nov. 21.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Ian Ransom in Melbourne; Editing by Peter Rutherford)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MELBOURNE (Reuters) -All-rounder Cameron Green says he will be ready to return to bowling during the domestic Sheffield…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,6675,85],"class_list":["post-84431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-na","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}