The Australia team, under the leadership of Mitchell Marsh, has shown a dominating performance in the ongoing ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024, co-hosted by the West Indies and the United States of America (USA), to get qualified for the ‘super-eight’ stage, after their huge win over Namibia in Antigua.
Thanks to the superb bowling performance from the whole unit, led by their leg-spinner Adam Zampa’s figures of 4/18 in four overs, Australia bundled out the opponents for just 72 runs in 17 overs, before chasing it down with nine wickets in hand and two balls before the powerplay over ends.
The 2021 champion sits at the top of their group, before taking on Scotland in the last fixture of the group stage. Even though that game won’t have much effect on their fate, the opponents will be highly benefitted from the victory.
Can Australia manipulate their Scotland result to knock out England
At the end of the Namibia game, the Australia fast bowler Josh Hazlewood, coming into the post-match press conference spoke about how they might try to design the victory over Scotland with a different margin to possibly knock out England out of the competition.
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In this tournament, you potentially come up against England at some stage again.’ Australia pacer Josh Hazlewood confirmed in the presser. ‘They’re probably one of the top few teams on their day and we’ve had some real struggles against them in T20 cricket, so if we can get them out of the tournament that’s in our best interest as well as probably everyone else.’
If England go on to win their last two games, against Oman and Namibia, they will expect Scotland to lose against Australia, or win by a narrow margin, whose net-run rate will keep them under them. But given their game is before the Scotland game, they won’t have the luxury to know the exact equation, which the former will have.
But the question stands, can any team try and think of doing that? The code of conduct of the ICC clarifies that any inappropriate manipulation of net run rate to favor a certain team will cost the captain of the side, and will be charged with a Level Two offence. Depending on the act, they could also carry a minimum sanction of 50% match fee fine.
This will also include four demerit points and two suspension points, which could ban their captain Mitchell Marsh out of Australia’s first two Super Eight games.
But how will they decide? It could be in many circumstances. Given they have qualified, Australia have all the rights to rest any of their players from the game, but there should be a balance. If they go for a batting-heavy side, or the vice-versa, or suddenly keep on taking odd and foolish decisions in the middle, the match referee could make a look.
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This also includes trying to shift the tempo of the game, from a position of dominance, but that too will be addressed after many observations.
‘Whether you get close and you just knock it around and drag it out. There’s a few options there but to take confidence from winning and winning well, I think that’s almost more important than potentially trying to knock someone else out.’ Hazlewood suggested. ‘They [England] have still got a lot to do on their behalf as well, so I think it’ll become clearer the closer we get to that sort of stuff.’
Australia’s last group game will be on June 16 at the Darren Sammy National Cricket Stadium in Gros Islet, St Lucia.