When Mitchell Marsh leads his men out as Australian captain for the 2024 T20 World Cup on Thursday, he will be banking on Pat Cummins.

The 32-year-old maintains a "great relationship" with Test and ODI captain Cummins and is looking up to him for inspiration.

In an interview with the Cricket Australia website on reaching Bridgetown for the World Cup, the 32-year-old Marsh spoke about their bond. "He (Cummins) is just a great friend, he has become a bit of mentor, just the way he goes about things, we got a great relationship, and I feel lucky to have him in our team as a player and as a person, a leader within our group, we have got lot of them. Hopefully, it will make my job a lot easier,” said the T20 Australia captain.

Australia open their T20 World Cup campaign against Oman in Bridgetown but Marsh is pretty relaxed given the experience and talent in the side. Ever since he led Australia to the U-19 World Cup title in 2010, Marsh was marked out as a future leader.

“Given thought to how you want to do things: Staying true to myself, we are blessed with a really experienced group, so not much has to change, keeping the environment relaxed, allow guys to express themselves and big thing for me is for us is to have fun.

"We do understand there are high pressure situations in tournaments like this, and we have to face them head on... we can also have a lot of fun while doing that and taking on the challenges,” Marsh said.

Marsh's stunning 77 not out off 50 balls against New Zealand won them the 2021 T20 World Cup final and he is keen to repeat such feats.

“It’s taken me a long time to not let the game dictate who I am as a person. These days I know I don’t have to be the best cricketer in the world so long as I contribute to my team winning games.”