Bangladesh v Australia
Bangladesh
- Bangladesh – who before this WC never played a T20 match in UAE. Their preparation was excellent coming to this tournament. They trounced both Australia and New Zealand at home series just before WC. That series win was their best preparation going to this WC with similar condition. However during this WC their batting failed once again, and what turned out to be a low scoring tournament(so far) they were not able to post a decent score(either setting a score or defending one).
Sadly Bangladesh lost chasing marginally small targets – 141 v Scotland and 143 v West Indies.
Now with 4 losses in 4 games they don’t have any chance of qualifying in semis. With nothing to lose they can now bat with greater freedom and less pressure. Interestingly their last match is against Australia now, who with 2 win 1 loss have everything to lose if they don’t win rest of their two games!. Bangladesh can bat first if they win the toss, and post a decent score and defend with their quality spin attack and guile of Mustafizur medium pace variation.
Australia
Australia on the other hand have everything to lose if they don’t win one of their two remaining matches!.
They face Bangaldesh first up, whom they lost 1-4 in August this year.
Australia chose to field in both games they won, and on both occasion their bowlers did excellent job to nullify RPO between 7-15th over, however it was not possible against England. Australia were defending a low target of 126, and England had already launched themselves to 66 in power play, and it continued till the reach the target in 12th over!!.
England’s onslaught have exposed their bowlers in all phases of that chase. This year this is Australia’s fourth successive loss defending < 150 target
Australia overall win record while bowling second is 47.60% , but if the target is less than 150 than success rate is only 15.80% (3 wins in 19 matches).
They need to change their bowling tactics to accommodate low to moderate scores their batsmen provide them with.
In SUPER 12, 18 matches had teams chasing 150+ target of which only 3 were successful….and if target is 150 or less than only once team won (12 matches).
Hence Australia need to pull their bowling socks and find a way to restrict teams
