Finch’s dangerously familiar Australia host an England T20 side in transition

World Cup warm-up series sees Jos Buttler fine-tune his team while Steve Smith’s spot is the hosts’ one question mark

There’s a pleasant sense of relief this week, as we head into an Australia-England cricket contest without an accompanying circus of hype.

Nobody is crowing about a limited-overs series constituting the Twenty20 Ashes, as the marketing departments might once have attempted. Instead the three matches between Sunday and Friday will be rightly seen as warm-ups for the T20 World Cup, even if they’re not part of the official warm-up program that will see Australia play once against India, and England once against Pakistan, before the tournament proper.

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