In order to exclude England from the T20 World Cup in 2024, Josh Hazlewood has acknowledged that Australia might attempt to manipulate any margin of victory over Scotland, should they be in a position to do so.
Australia may win their last group match by a narrow enough margin to guarantee Scotland advanced at England’s expense, although the precise amounts won’t be known until England has played Oman and Namibia. A loss against either country will end England’s tournament.
“In this tournament you potentially come up against England at some stage again and…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,” Hazlewood explained. It should be fascinating to observe. We haven’t really been in this situation as a team before, I don’t think, so we’ll just attempt to play it the same way we did today whether or not we have conversations. People, not me, will decide that.
Reminiscent of Australia’s 1999 ODI World Cup attempt to manipulate the system by playing slow cricket against the West Indies to guarantee additional points leading into the Super Sixes, such a situation would bring back memories.
Regarding how things would proceed, Josh Hazlewood said,
“Whether you get close and you just knock it around and drag it out.” “I think it’s almost more essential to draw confidence from winning and winning well than it is to attempt to knock someone else out, but there are a couple possibilities there. I believe that will become more evident the closer we get to that kind of stuff since they still have a lot of work to do on their end as well.”
If Australia were to step off the pedal, it wouldn’t harm their chances because run-rates wouldn’t carry over to the Super Eights in this competition. Regarding that point, Josh Hazlewood acknowledged that he found it strange that the group stage performances yielded no benefits.
“It’s a little bit strange that it doesn’t go through the tournament,” he stated. It’s a little bit unusual since this is probably the first World Cup in general that’s set up this way, as well as the first T20 World Cup that I’ve played. I believe that once you’re in the Super Eights, your efforts in the round robin and if you go through unbeaten and have a strong net run-rate don’t really matter that much. Thus, certainly, it’s an odd one, but that’s life.”
Even if captain Gerhard Erasmus was being diplomatic in the face of the rivalry between Australia and England, Namibia could, on the other hand, make all calculations obsolete if they manage to pull off an upset in their final match against England.
“Obviously, also in the Australian press that will be pretty liked,” he added. I can’t really comment on any of it, though, because we’re fairly impartial. To keep playing to the best of our abilities, we’re here. As captain, I regret to inform you that we haven’t quite performed to the best of our abilities in this competition. You guys are really encouraging us to try and win, I suppose because you’re all Australians, but I’d have to pull back a little and say that we probably just need to play our best cricket and nothing more.”
India
