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Travis Head believes Rohit Sharma’s India can match Australia’s great teams of the 2000s and 2010s, praising their bench strength and white-ball performance.
India lifting the 2025 Champions Trophy (AP Photo)
Travis Head believes that although the current India side is not up to the level of the great Australian sides 2000s and 2010s, they have the ingredients to get there in the coming years.
Under Rohit Sharma, India have already reached the finals of the World Test Championship (WTC) and the ODI World Cup while winning the latest T20 World Cup and the Champions Trophy. However, they failed to qualify for the 2023-25 WTC final after back-to-back series defeats to New Zealand and Australia.
Comparisons are often between them and the great Australian sides of the first two decades of this century that won most of the ODI World Cups and dominated the best teams in home and away Tests. In an exclusive conversation before IPL 2025, News18 CricketNext asked Head what he thought about the comparisons.
“Well, they (the Australians) did it,” he said. “I guess they were able to do it in every format. It’s probably the Tests where it is extremely close and could go either way. We’ve seen how close the BGT was. I feel like both teams are competing harder for that and where it goes.”
Head felt that a quality of a team in white-ball cricket can be judged by their bench strength, which, according to him, is a box that Rohit Sharma’s men tick — not just for the present but for the near future, too.
“But definitely in white-ball cricket, I think you only have to look at probably who’s missing out in that Indian team that would play in a lot of international teams. You go by that, and if that team was to change and have a lot of movement, the guys coming in would get the job done. You look at Abhi (Abhishek Sharma) not playing and Nitish Rana isn’t playing. There’s so many guys that could play in that team. Yeah, there’s so many players that could play in that team and do well on both batting and bowling. It’s just strength by your bench and the bench is there,” he said.
“So I think they’re going to set themselves up for a long period of time. The World Cup next year, the T20 World Cup is here in India. So we’re going to have our work cut out there again because they know the conditions so well, and it’s such a strong team. But it’s how you deal with all those pressures and whatnot. And that will be the part for India, I think, is how they can deal with working through those tournaments. If they do, then they’re going to find themselves in a lot of finals and then exciting for India and challenging for everyone else,” the opening batter added.
Head is currently playing in IPL 2025 for Sunrisers Hyderabad.
