Marsh's only focus white-ball cricket

With his whites stored away for the summer and his World Cup spot secure, Shaun Marsh will need to fire in short-form cricket if he’s any chance of forcing his way back into Australia’s Test side for their Ashes defence.

Dumped from the five-day format for the upcoming series against Sri Lanka, Marsh’s clinical 131 against India on Tuesday, his fourth one-day hundred from his past eight games, has helped ink his name in Australia’s squad for the World Cup later this year.

With his Test summer all but over, Marsh will feed on a diet of white-ball cricket in the lead-up to the World Cup; the left-hander will return to the KFC BBL next week before embarking on two white-ball tours of Asia in February and March that mean he will miss the remainder of the JLT Sheffield Shield season.

Selector Trevor Hohns maintains “the door is certainly not closed” on Marsh as a Test player, but the 35-year-old says his mind is firmly focused on white-ball cricket ahead of the World Cup.

“I’m not too sure, it’s something I’m not going to worry about too much,” he said today when asked if he’s a realistic chance of playing Test cricket again.

“I’ll just try and play some really good white-ball cricket now and see what happens.

“My Test stuff over the last 12 months has been really disappointing, so I’ve made a conscious effort to go out there in this series to free my mind and play my way.

“It was obviously disappointing (to be dropped), but at the end of the day I didn’t score enough runs. You’re there to score runs and I didn’t.

“I tried to put it to the back of my mind and move on and really focus on the white-ball stuff coming up.”

The unenviable task facing national selectors in a World Cup and Ashes year is underlined by the likelihood that Test hopefuls Marsh and Glenn Maxwell will play just a single first-class match over the next six months, while the likes of Aaron Finch, Marcus Stoinis and Peter Handscomb are unlikely to play any long-form cricket at all in that time in order to secure an Ashes spot.

Contracted to UK county side Glamorgan, Marsh could join Maxwell in playing county cricket in April for one first-class game and six one-dayers before returning to Australia for a pre-World Cup camp in Brisbane in early May.

Cricket Australia has moved to ease the headache for selectors by scheduling an Australia A tour in the UK to run concurrently with the World Cup, which will give Test specialists valuable exposure to the English Dukes ball in the lead-up to the Ashes.

But those in the World Cup squad will rightly be focused predominantly on the white ball until at least early July, limiting their chances to push for an Ashes spot with red-ball runs.

Australia are still scheduled to play 11 ODIs before their World Cup defence begins on June 1, but coach Justin Langer says Marsh has already secured his spot after a golden run since earning a recall less than nine months ago.

“He’ll be a big part of our World Cup campaign,” he said.

“He’s turning into a great one-day international player. Four hundreds in eight games.

“I’m really proud of him (having) been not selected for the next Test series against Sri Lanka, a lot of guys (under) that pressure can shrivel up.

“And he hasn’t, he’s stood tall, he’s working really hard, he’s had a couple of good innings now and I’m really proud of Shaun.”

Gillette ODI Series v India

Australia ODI squad: Aaron Finch (c), Jason Behrendorff, Alex Carey (wk), Peter Handscomb, Usman Khawaja, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Shaun Marsh, Glenn Maxwell, Jhye Richardson, Peter Siddle, Billy Stanlake, Marcus Stoinis, Ashton Turner, Adam Zampa

India ODI squad: Virat Kohli (c), Rohit Sharma (vc), Shikhar Dhawan, Ambati Rayudu, Dinesh Karthik, Kedar Jadhav, MS Dhoni (wk), Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Khaleel Ahmed, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj

First ODI: Australia won by 34 runs

Second ODI: India win by six wickets

Third ODI: January 18, MCG (D/N)