Travis Head, Australia's everyman, enters his box-office era

Start with a broth of barbecue scrapings, pluck a few hairs out of a scruffy moustache and throw 'em in, chuck in a coupla beers, couple of Bunnings sausages, ritually yell "oi" and "mayte" and "oi mayte" a few times, and you could be well down the road to conjuring up your own Travis Head.

If only it that were easy. There is no side in the world into which Head wouldn't moonwalk (although that's almost certainly not his dance - Head seems more like the kind of guy who, when the night is sufficiently old, can be depended upon to do the worm), but only one place in the world that could have produced him. Head would also score very high on that vital stat for any Australia cricketer: wanna-have-a-beer-with-ability.

And as tends to be the case with Australia, Head's cricket has begun to look more ominous as the knockouts approach. He's had a run of low scores recently, across formats, but now the business end of a big tournament is near. What else was Head to do but hit form? What else was Australia to do than impose themselves? The sharp end of a tournament is when Head and Australia show up.

Head almost didn't take off. He was batting on 6 when he miscued a pull to mid-on, where Rashid Khan dropped a straightforward catch. But then, Head flicked Fazalhaq Farooqi off his hips with that casually dominant air of his, and a parked train jerked to life and left the station. In sudden abundance were the Travis Head hits: the swivel-pulls, the array of cuts, the bludgeons to the leg-side. No error in length to Head went unpunished as he reeled off 59 off 40.

"Yeah, he batted nicely," captain Steve Smith said of Head to the broadcaster. "He obviously got a reprieve early - dropped at mid-on - but after that he hit the middle of the bat consistently and hit his areas. When he's going, he's as good as anyone in the world, so hopefully he can do that again in the semi-final."

What he did in the last big semi-final was crash 62 off 48 on a raging turner, after taking 2 for 21 with his offspin. Then, in the final, he clobbered 137 off 120, putting Australia on course for a casually dominant victory in Ahmedabad. India could be Australia's opponent in the semi-final. Between this 137 and his 163 off 174 in the 2023 World Test Championship final, there is no single player who has inflicted as much trauma on India over the past few years.

Despite having played fewer than 100 innings in every format, Head is also now in his global superstar era. In Rawalpindi, and in Lahore, Pakistanis - some travelling long distances - had come with the hopes of watching specifically him play. Although the stands in Lahore were overwhelmingly populated by Afghan supporters, there were louder cheers for Head's boundaries than for any other Australia success. Though he seems so rooted in Australian everyman-ness, there is universal appeal in the way he bats. The guy is box office.

Though he and Rohit Sharma do roughly the same job for their team, batting aggressively at the top of the order seems to cost Rohit something (that he scores hundreds at a slower rate is one example). But Head's explosions against the new ball feel effortless. He is as likely to punish a short ball dismissively in the 37th over as he is in the third. On Friday, Australia's innings only lasted 12.5 overs, but thanks to Head they had sped to 109 for 1, and were looking likely to run down Afghanistan's score.

Australia have arrived at the Champions Trophy with an air of casualness. Key players are missing. Marcus Stoinis even retired from the format shortly before the tournament. It felt like there were other priorities. And yet, Australia do what Australia does in global tournaments, which is threaten to win another global trophy, which their public will care about for maybe six months or whenever the footy starts again. Against Afghanistan at least, for now, Travis Head did what Travis Head does.