June 12 (Punjab Khabarnama) : Australia have guaranteed their spot in the Super Eights after winning their first three matches in Group B. England, with only one point from two games, must win both of their remaining matches to have any hope of advancing. Scotland, currently second with five points, are on track to claim the other Super Eights spot. A critical match between Australia and Scotland, both boasting a significantly better net run rate than England, is scheduled for Sunday in St Lucia.
Australia’s leading pacer Josh Hazlewood, during the post-match press conference following the side’s cruising 9-wicket win over Namibia on Wednesday, was asked on whether it would be in Aussie interest to help knock England out of the tournament. England’s hopes for a Super 8s qualification sit on Australia’s potentially massive win over Scotland, and Hazlewood stated that his side would like to make the equation difficult for Jos Buttler’s men.
“Yeah, I think so. In this tournament you potentially come up against England at some stage again and as you said 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. But yeah, it’ll be interesting to see,” Hazlewood said.
“We’ve never really been in this position before as a team I don’t think, so whether we have discussions or not, we’ll just try and play it again the way we did tonight. Yeah, that’ll be up to people, not me.”
‘Drag it out’
Hazlewood cheekily suggested that one way of ensuring things become difficult for England is to drag the game against Scotland for as long as possible.
“Not too sure really, whether you get close and you just knock it around and drag it out. There’s a few options there, but as you said, to take confidence from winning and winning well, I think that’s almost more important than potentially trying to knock someone else out. They’ve 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,” said the Aussie pacer.