The Australia men's national cricket team represents Australia in international cricket. Along with England, it is the joint oldest team in Test cricket history, playing and winning the first ever Test match in 1877; the team also plays One-Day International and Twenty20 International cricket, participating in both the first ODI, against England in the 1970–71 season and the first T20I, against New Zealand in the 2004–05 season, winning both games. The team draws its players from teams playing in the Australian domestic competitions – the Sheffield Shield, the Australian domestic limited-overs cricket tournament and the Big Bash League. Australia are the current ICC Cricket World Cup champions. They are generally regarded as the most successful national team in the history of cricket.
The national team has played 882 Test matches, winning 426, losing 235, 219 drawn and with 2 tied. , Australia is first in the ICC Test Rankings. Australia is the most successful team in Test cricket history, in terms of overall wins, win–loss ratio, and wins percentage. Australia have won the ICC World Test Championship once, defeating India in the final of the 2021–2023 World Test Championship. Test rivalries centre on The Ashes (with England), the Border–Gavaskar Trophy (with India), the Frank Worrell Trophy (with the West Indies), the Trans-Tasman Trophy (with New Zealand), and matches against South Africa.
The team has played 1,019 ODI matches, winning 617, losing 358, tying 9 and with 35 ending in a no-result. , Australia is ranked third in the ICC Men's ODI Team Rankings. Australia is one of the most successful teams in ODI cricket history, winning more than 60 per cent of their matches, with a record eight World Cup final appearances (1975, 1987, 1996, 1999, 2003, 2007, 2015, and 2023) and have won the World Cup a record six times: 1987, 1999, 2003, 2007, 2015, and 2023. Australia is the only team to appear in four consecutive World Cup finals (1996, 1999, 2003, and 2007), surpassing the old record of three consecutive World Cup appearances by the West Indies (1975, 1979, and 1983) and the only team to win three consecutive World Cups (1999, 2003, and 2007). The team was undefeated in 34 consecutive World Cup matches until the 2011 Cricket World Cup where Pakistan beat them by four wickets in the Group stage. Australia is also the second team to win a World Cup (2015) on home soil, after India (2011). Australia have also won the ICC Champions Trophy twice (2006 and 2009) making them the only team to be back-to-back winners in the Champions Trophy tournaments.
Australia has played 226 Twenty20 International matches, winning 124, losing 92, tying 3, and with 7 ending in a no-result. , Australia is ranked second in the ICC Men's T20I Team Rankings. Australia have won the ICC Men's T20 World Cup once, defeating New Zealand in the 2021 Final.
On 12 January 2019, Australia won an ODI against India at the Sydney Cricket Ground by 34 runs, to record their 1,000th win in international cricket.
One of the highlights of Australia's early history was the 1882 Test match against England, which took place at The Oval. In this match, Fred Spofforth took 7/44 in the game's fourth innings, saving the match by preventing England from making their 85-run target.
After this match, The Sporting Times, a major newspaper in London at the time, printed a mock obituary in which the death of English cricket was proclaimed and the announcement made that "the body was cremated and the ashes taken to Australia." This was the start of the famous The Ashes series, in which Australia and England play a series of Test matches to decide the holder of the Ashes. To this day, the contest is one of the fiercest rivalries in sport.
Victor Trumper became one of Australia's first sporting heroes, who was widely considered Australia's greatest batsman before Don Bradman became one of the most popular players. He played a record (at the time) of a number of Tests at 49, and scored 3163 runs at a high for the time average of 39.04. He died in 1915 at the age of 37 from kidney disease, causing national mourning. The Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, in its obituary for him, called him Australia's greatest batsman: " Of all the great Australian batsmen Victor Trumper was by general consent the best and most brilliant." The years leading up to the start of World War were marred by conflict between the players, led by Clem Hill, Victor Trumper and Frank Laver, and the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket, led by Peter McAlister, who was attempting to gain more control of tours from the players.
This led to six leading players (the so-called "Big Six") walking out on the 1912 Triangular Tournament in England, with Australia fielding what was generally considered a second-rate team. This was the last series before the war, and no more cricket was played by Australia for eight years. Fast bowler Tibby Cotter, who had caused outrage with his bowling during the 1905 tour of England, after first striking W.G. Grace with the ball, before dismissing him the following delivery, was killed during the Battle of Beersheba.
The 1932–33 England tour of Australia is considered one of the most infamous episodes of cricket, due to the England team's use of bodyline, where captain Douglas Jardine instructed his bowlers Bill Voce and Harold Larwood to bowl fast, short-pitched deliveries aimed at the bodies of the Australian batsmen. The tactic, although effective, was widely considered by Australian crowds as vicious and unsporting. Injuries to Bill Woodfull, who was struck over the heart, and Bert Oldfield, who received a fractured skull (although from a non-bodyline ball), exacerbated the situation, almost causing a full-scale riot from the 50 000 fans at the Adelaide Oval for the third Test. The conflict almost escalated into a diplomatic incident between the two countries, as leading Australian political figures, including the Governor of South Australia, Alexander Hore-Ruthven, protested to their English counterparts. Unit 2 – Managing the Match: Management issues and umpiring . International Institute of Cricket Umpiring and Scoring. Retrieved 2 September 2018. Frith, pp. 241–59. The series ended in a 4–1 win for England but the bodyline tactics used were banned the year after. The Australian team put the result of this series behind them, winning their next tour of England in 1934. The team was led by Bill Woodfull on his final tour and was notably dominated by Ponsford and Bradman, who twice put on partnerships of over 380 runs, with Bradman once again scoring a triple century at Leeds. The bowling was dominated by the Spin bowling pair of Bill O'Reilly and Clarrie Grimmett, who took 53 wickets between them, with O'Reilly twice taking seven-wicket hauls.
Sir Donald Bradman is widely considered the greatest player of all time. He dominated the sport from 1930 until his retirement in 1948, setting new records for the highest score in a Test innings (334 vs England at Headingley in 1930), the most runs (6996), the most centuries (29), the most double centuries and the highest Test and first-class batting averages. His record for the highest Test batting average – 99.94 – has never been beaten. It is almost 40 runs per innings above the next highest average. He would have finished with an average of over 100 runs per innings if he had not been dismissed for a duck in his last Test. He was in 1949 for services to cricket. He is generally considered one of Australia's all-time greatest sporting heroes, if not the greatest.
Test cricket was again interrupted by war, with the last Test series in 1938 made notable by Len Hutton scoring a world record 364 for England, and with Chuck Fleetwood-Smith conceding 298 runs in England's world record total of 7/903. Ross Gregory, a notable young batsman who played two Tests before the war, was killed in the war.
Australia was less successful in the 1950s, losing three consecutive Ashes series to England, including a horrendous 1956 Tour of England, where the 'spin twins' Jim Laker and Tony Lock destroyed Australia, taking 61 wickets between them, including Laker taking 19 wickets in the game (a first-class record) at Headingley, a game dubbed Laker's Match.
However, the team rebounded to win five consecutive series in the latter half of the 1950s, first under the leadership of Ian Johnson, then Ian Craig and Richie Benaud. The series against the West Indies in the 1960–61 season was notable for the Tied Test in the first game at the Gabba, which was the first in Test cricket. Australia ended up winning the series 2–1 after a hard-fought series that was praised for its excellent standards and sense of fair play. Stand-out players in that series as well as through the early part of the 1960s were Richie Benaud, who took a then-record number of wickets as a Leg spin and who also captained Australia in 28 Tests, including 24 without defeat;Alan Davidson, who was a notable fast-bowler and also became the first player to take 10 wickets and make 100 runs in the same game in the first Test; Bob Simpson, who also later captained Australia for two different periods of time; Colin McDonald, the first-choice opening batsman for most of the 1950s and early '60s; Norm O'Neill, who made 181 in the Tied Test;Neil Harvey, towards the end of his long career; and Wally Grout, an excellent wicket-keeper who died at the age of 41. Obituary
In May 1977, Kerry Packer announced he was organising a breakaway competition Australian Heritage Council. Accessed 29 July 2007. – World Series Cricket (WSC) – after the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) refused to accept Nine Network's bid to gain exclusive television rights to Australia's Test matches in 1976. Packer secretly signed leading international cricketers to his competition, including 28 Australians. Almost all of the Australian Test team at the time were signed to WSC – notable exceptions including Gary Cosier, Geoff Dymock, Kim Hughes and Craig Serjeant – and the Australian selectors were forced to pick what was generally considered a third-rate team from players in the Sheffield Shield. Former player Bob Simpson, who had retired 10 years previously after a conflict with the board, was recalled at the age of 41 to captain Australia against India. Jeff Thomson was named deputy in a team that included seven debutants. Australia managed to win the series 3–2, mainly thanks to the batting of Simpson, who scored 539 runs, including two centuries; and the bowling of Wayne Clark, who took 28 wickets. Australia lost the next series 3–1 against the West Indies, which was fielding a full strength team; and also lost the 1978–79 Ashes series 5–1, the team's worst Ashes result in Australia. Graham Yallop was named as captain for the Ashes, with Kim Hughes taking over for the 1979–80 tour of India. Rodney Hogg took 41 wickets in his debut series, an Australian record. Wisden Summary of Tour accessed 16 December 2014 WSC players returned to the team for the 1979–80 season after a settlement between the ACB and Kerry Packer. Greg Chappell was reinstated as captain.
The underarm bowling incident of 1981 occurred when, in an ODI against New Zealand, Greg Chappell instructed his brother Trevor Chappell to bowl an underarm bowling to New Zealand batsman Brian McKechnie with New Zealand needing a six to tie off the last ball. The aftermath of the incident soured political relations between Australia and New Zealand, with several leading political and cricketing figures calling it "unsportsmanlike" and "not in the spirit of cricket".
Australia continued its success up until the early 1980s, built around the Chappell brothers, Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thomson and Rod Marsh. The 1980s was a period of relative mediocrity after the turmoil caused by the Rebel Tours of South Africa and the subsequent retirement of several key players. The rebel tours were funded by the South African Cricket Board to compete against its national team, which had been banned—along with many other sports, including Olympic athletes—from competing internationally, due to the South African government's racist apartheid policies. Some of Australia's best players were poached: Graham Yallop, Carl Rackemann, Terry Alderman, Rodney Hogg, Kim Hughes, John Dyson, Greg Shipperd, Steve Rixon and Steve Smith amongst others. These players were handed three-year suspensions by the Australian Cricket Board which greatly weakened the player pool for the national teams, as most were either current representative players or on the verge of gaining honours.
Under the captaincy of Allan Border and the new fielding standards put in place by new coach Bob Simpson, the team was restructured and gradually rebuilt their cricketing stocks. Some of the rebel players returned to the national team after serving their suspensions, including Trevor Hohns, Carl Rackemann and Terry Alderman. During these lean years, it was the batsmen Border, David Boon, Dean Jones, the young Steve Waugh and the bowling feats of Alderman, Bruce Reid, Craig McDermott, Merv Hughes and to a lesser extent, Geoff Lawson who kept the Australian team afloat.
With the emergence of players such as Ian Healy, Mark Taylor, Geoff Marsh, Mark Waugh, and Greg Matthews in the late 1980s, Australia was on the way back from the doldrums. They went on to win their first ever world title by getting the better of England in the 1987 Cricket World Cup final. Winning the Ashes in 1989, the Australians got a roll on beating Pakistan, Sri Lanka and then followed it up with another Ashes win on home soil in 1991. The Australians went on to the West Indies and had their chances but ended up losing the series. However, they bounced back and beat the Indians in their next Test series; with the retirement of the champion but defensive Allan Border, a new era of attacking cricket had begun under the leadership of firstly Mark Taylor and then Steve Waugh. Australia ended the 20th century by winning the 1999 Cricket World Cup. They defeated Pakistan in the final.
Following the 2006–07 Ashes series which Australia won 5–0, Australia slipped in the rankings after the retirements of key players. In the 2013/14 Ashes series, Australia again defeated England 5–0 and climbed back to third in the ICC International Test rankings. In February/March 2014, Australia beat South Africa, the number one team in the world, 2–1 and overtook them to return to the top of the rankings. In 2015, Australia won the Cricket World Cup, losing just one game for the tournament.
In 2020–21, Australia hosted India for 3 ODIs, 3 T20Is, and 4 Tests. They won the ODI series 2–1, but lost the T20I series 2–1. Then, the two teams competed for the Border–Gavaskar Trophy which saw one of the greatest overseas Test triumphs by India in the 4th Test to win the series 2–1, with the 3rd Test being drawn. In 2021, Australia named a 15-member squad for the upcoming T20 World Cup with regular limited overs captain Aaron Finch leading the team. In finals, they would face their trans-Tasman rivals New Zealand and win the match to claim their maiden T20 World Cup Trophy.
On 19 November 2021, Tim Paine resigned from the captaincy due to off-the-field misconduct, and was replaced by Pat Cummins, who became Australia's 47th Test captain, with Steve Smith named as his deputy. Under Pat Cummins, Australia retained 2021–22 Ashes at home by winning the series 4–0. Australia then toured Pakistan in March 2022 for the first time since 1998 to play 3 test matches and 3 ODIs and one-off T20. Australia won all the series. Australia failed to advance to knockouts in 2022 T20 World Cup. Australia's white ball captain Finch retired from international cricket. Afterwards, Pat Cummins was made ODI captain.
Under Cummins’ captaincy, Australia had a stellar 2023, winning their maiden ICC World Test Championship title (which made them the first team in history to win all major ICC Trophies across all formats), and retaining the Ashes on their tour to England. In November, they won the 2023 Cricket World Cup, defeating the host India in the final.
| Melbourne Cricket Ground | Melbourne | 100,024 |
| Perth Stadium | Perth | 61,266 |
| Adelaide Oval | Adelaide | 53,500 |
| Sydney Cricket Ground | Sydney | 48,000 |
| The Gabba | Brisbane | 36,000 |
| Carrara Oval | Gold Coast | 21,000 |
| Bellerive Oval | Hobart | 20,000 |
| Manuka Oval | Canberra | 12,000 |
In One Day International (ODI) cricket and Twenty20 International cricket, the team wears uniforms usually coloured green and gold, the national colours of Australia. There has been a variety of different styles and layouts used in both forms of the limited-overs game, with coloured clothing (sometimes known as "pyjamas") being introduced for World Series Cricket in the late 1970s. The Toyota or Qantas logo is prominently displayed on the shirts and other gears. The current T20I kit consists of green as the primary colour and gold as the secondary colour. The ODI is the opposite of the T20I kit, with gold as the primary colour and green as the secondary colour. However, since Australia beat New Zealand at the MCG in the 2015 Cricket World Cup wearing the gold uniform, it has also become their primary colour, with the hats used being called 'floppy gold', formerly known as 'baggy gold', a limited-overs equivalent to a baggy green. Until the early 2000s and briefly in early 2020, in ODIs, Australia wore yellow helmets, before using green helmets as in test matches.
Former suppliers were Asics (1999), ISC (2000–2001), Fila (2002–2003) and Adidas (2004–2010) among others. Before Travelex (and 3 in test matches), some of the former sponsors were XXXX (1990–1992), Coca-Cola (1993–1998), Fly Emirates (1999) and Carlton & United Breweries (2000–2001).
| + ! !Kit manufacturer !Primary sponsor | ||
| 1979–90 | Adidas | |
| 1990–93 | Unknown | XXXX |
| 1992 | ISC | |
| 1993–98 | Unknown | Coca-Cola |
| 1999 WC | Asics | Fly Emirates |
| 2000–03 | ISC | |
| 2003–03 | Fila | Carlton & United Breweries |
| 2004–07 | Adidas | Travelex, 3 (test) |
| 2008–11 | Victoria Bitter, Commonwealth Bank (test), KFC (T20), Qantas (Away; since 2015) | |
| 2012–18 | Asics | |
| 2018–22 | Alinta Energy (Home), Qantas (Away) | |
| 2023–2025 | Toyota (Home), Qantas (Away) | |
| 2025– | Westpac (Home), Qantas (Away) |
This is a list of every active player who is contracted to Cricket Australia, has played for Australia since 1 April 2025 or was named in the current Test, ODI or T20I squad. Uncapped players are listed in italics.
Last updated: 1 April 2026
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| 2016 |
| 2024 |
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| 2025 |
| 2022 |
| 2024 |
| 2026 |
| 2018 |
| 2026 |
| Head coach | Andrew McDonald |
| Assistant coach | Andre Borovec |
| Assistant coach | Daniel Vettori |
| T20 Consultant | Brad Hodge |
| Batting coach | Michael Di Venuto |
| Bowling coach | Adam Griffith |
| Fielding and Keeping coach | Matthew Wade |
| Physiotherapist | Nick Jones |
| Psychologist | Mary Spillane |
| George Bailey |
| Andrew McDonald |
| Tony Dodemaide |
| +ICC World Test Championship record |
| 3rd |
| Champions |
| Runners-up |
| +World Cup record | ||||||||
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| 2015 | Champions | 1/14 | 9 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 1 | |
| 2019 | Semi-finals | 4/10 | 10 | 7 | 3 | 0 | 0 | |
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| TBD | ||||||||
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| +T20 World Cup record | ||||||
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| Group Stage | 9/20 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Qualified as co-hosts | ||||||
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| +Champions Trophy record | |||||||
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| 6 | |||||||
| +Commonwealth Games record |
| 0 |
| 0 |
Awards
| 2023 |
| 2023–24 |
| 2023–24 |
| 2024–25 |
| 2003–04 |
| 2024–25 |
| 2023–24 |
The authorship of this "Under the Southern Cross I Stand" is credited to former wicketkeeper Rod Marsh, who was apparently inspired by Henry Lawson's 1887 poem, "Flag of the Southern Cross". Marsh initially had the role of leading the team in singing it and, on his retirement, passed it on to Allan Border. The other players to have taken on the role are David Boon (when Border took over the captaincy), Ian Healy (on Boon's retirement), Ricky Ponting (on Healy's retirement), Justin Langer (when Ponting took over the captaincy), Michael Hussey (on Langer's retirement), Nathan Lyon (on Hussey's retirement). With Nathan Lyon's departure from the team due to injury after the Second Ashes Test at Lord's in 2023 , custody of the song has passed to wicketkeeper Alex Carey.
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