Australia’s hopes of a T20 World Cup lifeline have been dashed with Zimbabwe on their way to the Super Eight
Rain has sealed Australia’s fate at the T20 World Cup with a washout on Tuesday between Zimbabwe and Ireland knocking Mitch Marsh’s men out of the tournament.
Zimbabwe needed just one point from the game to progress to the Super Eight stage, and they got it courtesy of a dreary Kandy day as the grey skies set in mid-morning.
The Pallekele Stadium ground staff emerged about 55 minutes after the scheduled 3pm start time, working to remove surface water from the covers for the next 90 minutes before the skies darkened and they went back on for good, with the match abandoned without a ball bowled at 5.30pm local time (11pm AEDT).
The result confirms the African nation’s best ever finish at a men’s T20 World Cup after they finished bottom of their Super 12s group at the 2022 tournament in Australia after making it through the first round.
Australia’s players and staff could only watch out their hotel room windows some 10km from the ground as the rain failed to relent, with the No.2 ranked side eliminated from the ICC’s T20 showpiece without firing a shot.
It renders their final group game against Oman on Friday night a dead rubber with both teams already on their way out of the tournament, but Australia can only lose further from that should they finish a disastrous campaign with another sub-par performance.
Australia have now missed the semi-finals in the past three T20 World Cups but this is by far the 2021 champions’ worst result since 2009 when they last failed to reach the Super Eight following losses to West Indies and Sri Lanka.
Marsh lamented a lack of execution after being crushed by eight wickets at the hands of tournament co-hosts Sri Lanka the previous evening, unable to capitalise on the platform laid by himself and Travis Head at the top of the order.
“We’ll never know what would have happened if we made 220,” he said after Australia lost all 10 wickets for 77 runs having reached 0-104 in the ninth over.
“We had a good platform, but we just weren’t able to execute towards the back end.
“It’s disappointing and (I’m) certainly not here to blame anyone.
“It’s tournament play.
“You lose a game that you shouldn’t, with all due respect to Zimbabwe, they played fantastic, and you’re under the pressure and (against Sri Lanka) we we’re outplayed, so that’s the position we find ourselves in.”
While Australia have been disappointing, Zimbabwe have been equally as clinical, and they’re now set for their best cricket World Cup result in any format since finishing fifth and narrowly missing the semi-finals on net run-rate at the 1999 ODI World Cup.
It’s an even more remarkable a feat given they were the only Test-playing nation not to qualify for the previous T20 tournament two years ago after losing to Uganda and Namibia in the African qualifiers.
But this tournament they’ve been outstanding, thumping Oman by eight wickets with 39 balls remaining before showing Australia how to construct their batting innings on the slow and low Premadasa Stadium pitch in Colombo while shrugging off the loss of veteran Brendan Taylor to a tournament-ending hamstring injury prior to the match.
“We didn’t set a goal just to qualify, we’ve got other goals to achieve, and we remain focused for that,” captain Sikandar Raza said after the match was abandoned.
“Yes, Super Eight is certainly a tick in the box, but it’s certainly not the whole box we set out for.
“We are certainly very humbled, very grateful and very pleased at the same time, (but) as much as the boys are enjoying it, and rightly so, we’ve got another game in less than 48 hours, which we need to prepare for.
“We’ll have a little celebration in the changing room but once we leave changing room, we’ve got another game … so our focus will shift to that game pretty quickly.”
Zimbabwe will now take Australia’s seeded spot in Group 1 of the Super Eight phase where they’ll face title favorites India, West Indies and beaten 2024 finalists South Africa, who have all likewise sealed their progression to the next stage.
After Australia dust themselves off to face Oman (Saturday, 12.30am AEDT), their next matches will be away bilateral series against Pakistan (three ODIs) and Bangladesh (three ODIs and three T20Is) in the middle of the year.
All matches will be broadcast on Amazon’s Prime Video
