Pretending World Cup is not on: Hazlewood

IANS  |  Brisbane 

Not part of Australia's squad, pacer says he is trying to pretend the mega tournament is not taking place, rather focusing on the upcoming Ashes.

With navigating their way through the early part of the tournament in England and Wales, Hazlewood is currently at the Bupa National Centre here as part of a week-long training camp with the A squads.

"I'm trying to focus on what I'm doing up here," he told com.au. "I'll sit down at night and watch a couple of overs but I'm trying to steer clear of it a little bit.

"The more you watch something, the more you probably miss it. So I'm just trying to pretend it's not on, to a degree."

Hazlewood said the timing of his is what is more frustrating, just ahead of

"It's a tournament that only comes around every four years, and just purely the timing of the - that's probably the most frustrating thing," he added.

"To be fit now while it's on, it's hard to take that as well I guess."

Hazlewood also admitted he was under the pump physically during the 2015 Ashes in which he was just five Tests old.

"My body was fried. The first two, two-and-a-half (Ashes) Tests were really good - I took five wickets in each of the first two Tests, then three or four in the next one, and everything was going great.

"And then I think it wasn't really my skill that let me down, it was my body; I really struggled through the back half of that third Test and then into the fourth.

"I'd just been used to bowling through summer, having a good break and then getting up again for the next summer, and I'd been doing that for three or four years.

"Then the first time you actually bowl through winter, everything just catches up with you, all the niggles from summer, and it's like a snowball effect. The first time you do it is the hardest.

"I was reasonably happy with things though; I know I can do a great job when I'm physically pretty fresh and that's how I'm going to enter this Ashes, so I'm looking forward to it."

Hazlewood has tasted considerable success in the 50-over format.

In the 77 ODIs played between World Cups, Hazlewood (31 matches) was their most economical bowler with a runs-per-over figure of 4.85 (Pat second with 4.96 in 36 matches), while his strike-rate of 31.8 was only marginally behind (30.6) and (29.3 in 34 matches).

--IANS

dm/kk/bg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: Tue, June 11 2019. 16:28 IST