Batch Includes Three West Aussies in Azlan Shah Squad

Kookaburras coach Colin Batch has named three Western Australian athletes in his 18-man squad for the annual Azlan Shah Cup in Malaysia.

The Kookaburras team will feature Trent Mitton, Tyler Lovell and Tom Wickham in matches against New Zealand, Malaysia, India, Great Britain and Japan.

Lovell will provide goalkeeping duties for the Australians in tandem with Andrew Charter, whilst Mitton and Wickham will form part of the Kookaburras’ strike-force over the week-long tournament commencing on April 29.

The tournament will be the team’s first overseas campaign under the guidance of Batch and he suggested it represented an opportunity to further develop depth in the Australian pool after a clean-sweep series win over Pakistan in the Northern Territory earlier in the month.

“The team we have selected for Azlan Shah is slightly different to the team who competed in Darwin; the reason being that we would like to give as many players as possible the opportunity to show their ability at an international level before we make the team selection for the World League Semi-finals.”

“The players we have coming in are long standing Kookaburras and we would like to see them play in the team structure that we have as a result of new players being selected to the 2017 squad,” Batch added.

Batch said the Cup would test his squad both in terms of talent and temperature.

“The Azlan Shah Cup is a competition which Australia has traditionally been invited to, and it provides good competition for us, so it will be interesting to see how our new look side fares against our opponents in the hot climate of Malaysia.”