A similarly depleted squad of defending ODI champions improbably pulled on white jackets 16 years ago
What Australia can learn from 2009 Champions Trophy winners
Of all the silverware stockpiled by Australia's white-ball teams, the 2009 Champions Trophy may rank as the most forgettable.
Peter Siddle, whose nicking off of Brendon McCullum in the final does not even stand as the most memorable McCullum duck against the Aussies in an ICC decider, admits he no longer knows where the white jacket he earnt as a member of the winning side is.
Yet if the Australian outfit patched together to compete at the tournament's reboot in Pakistan need any inspiration, they could do worse than looking back at the last time they clinched the ICC's 'other' 50-over trophy.
The depletion of the Aussies' current squad has few parallels with any of their previous tilts at a multilateral crown, with captain Pat Cummins one of six first-choice squad members who will skip the two-and-a-half week tournament.
Australia's 2009 group that arrived in South Africa was, however, also shorn of several of its most important contributors.
Vice-captain Michael Clarke flew home with a back injury not long after the Aussies arrived in Johannesburg hot off a 6-1 ODI series win over England, while Brad Haddin was ruled out due to the finger he broke during the 2009 Ashes series.
The absences of Australia's two leading ODI run scorers over the preceding 12 months was compounded by a knee injury to Nathan Bracken, then Australia's No.1 ranked bowler in the format.
It suddenly left the likes of Tim Paine (Haddin's understudy who had played just eight ODIs coming into the tournament), Peter Siddle (three ODIs) and Callum Ferguson (20) playing major roles in a team selection chief Andrew Hilditch had said was in a "rebuilding phase".
The trio, all aged 24, were the youngest members of the squad and played all five games in their unbeaten run.
"It was a side that still had a lot of experience and firepower, but a mix of youth in there as well. It still felt like we had all the pieces you needed," Ferguson, who has been able to locate and still fit into his white winner's jacket from 2009, told cricket.com.au.
"It never really crept into the psyche that we were in a transitioning side. When we were 6-0 up in England, we were feeling like a dominant side, if anything."
Also like the current Australia side, the 2009 team were the reigning ODI champions but had few of their World Cup winners to lean on.
Of the XI that clinched Australia's third straight World Cup title in Barbados in 2007, only three – captain Ricky Ponting, Mike Hussey and Shane Watson – returned for the Champions Trophy.
In this respect, the current outfit has a leg up on the 2009 group.
Six players who featured in the 2023 World Cup final triumph in Ahmedabad are in Pakistan; Steve Smith (captaining in place of Cummins), Josh Inglis, Travis Head, Glenn Maxwell, Adam Zampa and Marnus Labuschagne. Two more, Alex Carey and Sean Abbott, played earlier in that campaign.
It is in the pace brigade that the experience chasm between an attack regularly featuring Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood, and which is now set to throw Abbott, Nathan Ellis, Ben Dwarsuis, Spencer Johnson and Aaron Hardie in the deep end on flat Pakistani pitches, is most telling.
Of those seamers, only Abbott has played more than 10 ODIs.
Siddle can relate to Australia's rookie crop of quicks better than anyone.
"I think I was still trying to work out what I was, and where I was in white ball cricket," Siddle, who turned out for all five Ashes Test earlier in 2009 but had played just 13 one-dayers for Victoria, told cricket.com.au.
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"I didn't have the luxury back then of having played a lot of T20. I hadn't played a lot for Victoria. I was just leaning on the experience I got from playing Test cricket pretty much, and then the experience of the other players I had around me.
"To open the bowling replacing a guy that had held up the one-day team as the best one-day bowler in the world around those years (Bracken), it was tough act to follow."
Australia recovered from dicey positions against West Indies and Pakistan during the group stages to secure their path to the semis on pitches that tired quickly given only two venues were used for the event.
Shane Watson, after making consecutive ducks to begin the tournament, made unbeaten tons in the two knockout games to topple New Zealand in the decider at Centurion, after Ponting also struck a not-out hundred in the semi-final against England.
"There was always something riding on every single game," Watson said last month. "When you're playing bilateral series throughout the year, you can get a bit stale.
"But when you play an ICC event, a Champions Trophy where there's only eight teams, there is something riding on every ball … if a team gets something slightly wrong, then you're out of the tournament.
"That (2009) was the time where I was able to solidify my mind that I had the tools to be able to perform for Australia."
The tournament marks a career highlight in the white-ball careers of both Ferguson and Siddle. Ferguson wrenched his knee in the final and played just five more ODIs for his career, while Siddle featured in only 12 more and prospered more as a Test bowler.
The pair are bullish their Champions Trophy successors can pull off something similar to what they did.
In Smith and Head, Australia have two proven top-order stars who will hope to replicate the feats of Ponting and Watson in the tournament's crunch time, while Ferguson believes international cricket is yet to see the best of the likes of Jake Fraser-McGurk, Matt Short, Aaron Hardie and Spencer Johnson.
"I wonder whether it might actually bring the best out of couple of these players," said Ferguson.
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"They've probably been fighting themselves a little bit with how to go about it and what's the best game style individually.
"I know they'll be disappointed with the output that they've had early in their careers at the top the order, particularly Short and Fraser McGurk, but I do believe they've got the talent.
"It's a matter of something just needing to click for them. They will feel like they're at something pretty big and pretty special (playing for Australia).
"If you look at Jake Fraser-McGurk, apart from the one-day stuff, the majority of the big environments and the big occasions that he's run into over the last few years, he has actually kicked into gear."
Siddle thinks strong tournaments from Australia's lesser lights could even put pressure on some of the incumbents for spots in the ODI side.
"I'd played Test cricket for not that long at that stage, but I'd had a good six months and I'd been in those high-pressure environments," he said.
"Yes, it was a different format but I knew that I had performed at that level against some of the best.
"That's where this group of guys are in a similar boat.
"Yes, they haven't maybe played in huge tournaments, but the boys have played in a lot of big moments now around the world, whether it's IPL or finals in IPL.
"The benefit with the guys these days is they've played a fair bit of domestic and high-level T20 cricket against decent players around the world.
"They know the level that they need to get to. They'll be hungry to probably show these guys that aren't there – 'Starcy' and Cummins and Hazelwood, those types of guys – that they can perform.
"Potentially it's a moment where they could end up doing well in this tournament and those guys don't then end up coming back to playing white-ball cricket for Australia."
2025 ICC Men's Champions Trophy
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Australia's Group B fixtures
February 22: Australia v England, Lahore (8pm AEDT)
February 25: Australia v South Africa, Rawalpindi (8pm AEDT)
February 28: Afghanistan v Australia, Lahore (8pm AEDT)
March 4: Semi-final 1, Dubai (8pm AEDT)
March 5: Semi-final 2, Lahore (8pm AEDT)
March 9: Final, Lahore or Dubai (8pm AEDT)
Australia squad: Steve Smith (c), Sean Abbott, Alex Carey, Ben Dwarshuis, Nathan Ellis, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Spencer Johnson, Aaron Hardie, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Marnus Labuschagne, Glenn Maxwell, Tanveer Sangha, Matt Short, Adam Zampa. Travelling reserve: Cooper Connolly