Adelaide, Oct 15 : Injured left-handed opener Travis Head said he is hopeful of playing in Australia's matches in the ongoing 2023 Men's ODI World Cup after returning to batting in the nets post suffering a fracture in his left hand during the ODI series against South Africa. Head had the protective splint removed from his left hand on Friday last week and has faced many throw-downs in the practice nets since then at his residence in Adelaide. As of now, the initial expectation for Head's participation in the World Cup is to play Australia's match against the Netherlands in New Delhi on October 25. "It's coming along well, and probably better than we hoped. When we decided not to go with surgery, which would have meant a 10-week recovery, we were told it would be a minimum of six weeks with the splint before we could look at playing again." "Going by that plan, the Netherlands game will be just under six weeks from impact which is a pretty aggressive date so everything would have to go perfectly from here to make that deadline. But we'll just see how it progresses over the next few days and I'm excited by the prospect of joining the boys over there later in the week." "I wasn't even sure I'd be able to bat when the splint came off but, apart from a fair bit of stiffness given I hadn't been able to use it for the past four weeks, I was able to hit balls and play a fair range of shots," Head was quoted as saying by cricket.com.au. He also admitted that how he fares post injury in fielding is still a bit of an unknown for him. "I'm not sure what it will mean for fielding, we haven't explored that yet. I had it scanned the other day and it's healing, and I guess it will be a bit like Pat Cummins' wrist that gets strapped up as protection after he got that fracture." "So there's still a few hurdles we need to clear, and everything needs to fall into place from my end and from the team's point of view over there before the final decision is made. But hopefully, that's all good, and I'm on the plane on Thursday," concluded Head. /IANS