Match Preview – Australia vs England, ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 2023, 36th Match

Big picture: Can England spoil Australia’s semi-final progress?

Suffice it to say, this is not the opportunity you anticipated. England against Australia at the end of the group stage, in the most bombastic venue this World Cup has to offer. It was at minimum a shootout for the semi-finals, and perhaps even a dress rehearsal for an even bigger showdown at this same venue later.

And a long, long time ago, when Australia were the lowest team in the World Cup standings after back-to-back defeats to South Africa and India, England might even have assumed that this would be his opportunity to win the final match against Australia. their oldest enemies.

How the worm has transformed since then. Australia have made it four wins from four, while it is England who have spent the last fortnight circling the drain. One way or another, they go into this competition with a 0.4% chance of reaching the round of 16 – but the fact that they’re not dead yet despite losing five out of six only makes show how busy this format is for established teams.

“The problem is we’ve been shit,” as Ben Stokes succinctly put it, summing up a terrible campaign.

And yet there is still plenty at stake for both sides – and it’s not just a matter of pride on England’s part. Last week’s shock revelation that the final standings of this group stage will determine the participants in the 2025 Champions Trophy means there will be more humiliation to come if England fail to make it through one way or another to make their way from tenth to eighth place in the ranking.

As for Australia, getting to the semi-finals won’t be smooth sailing if they drop the ball now. A pumped-up Afghanistan awaits them in the next round (and they look set to be level on points at the end of their ongoing clash with the Netherlands) while a trailing Pakistan offer another unexpected challenge in the top-flight four, although his. a clash with fourth-placed New Zealand will mean two points lost by either rival.

Very different degrees of danger are therefore at play, but as tends to be the case in Anglo-Australian World Cup clashes, the immediate context of the tournament is sure to be integrated into the wider narrative and more wild from an ancient and implacable rivalry.

And for the most recent installment, you don’t need to delve too far into the memory banks. As many as 15 of the 22 players who paraded in Ahmedabad on Saturday will have played their part in an Ashes for eternity during the English summer that has just ended, and with this series locked at 2-2 – amid the discussions of moral victories on the one hand. and disdain for the other’s “Bazball” narrative – it won’t take much for this rematch to be disguised as de facto decision maker.

Certainly the near-messianic sense of purpose that summed up England’s Test summer has deserted them since the switch from red-ball to white-ball cricket, and speaking at Dharmasala last week, Pat Cummins, the captain Australian, visibly had difficulty suppressing his mirth when asked to comment on the fate of his rival.

He had less reason to smile in an uncomfortable preparation for this match. Glenn Maxwell, the recent compiler of the fastest century in World Cup history, is out of competition after his freak golf injury (why still play golf? How do real professional golfers not suffer these endless mishaps on the course?), while Mitchell Marsh’s return to Perth, for family reasons, represents an untimely disruption after his richly productive role in the top three.

With David Warner and Travis Head fit again, Australia can still boast a first two matches with three times as many centuries as the entire England team has contributed over six matches – and confidence that ‘She will be able to project on the power play could but be crucial.

England, however, will go into this match with judgment swirling around their failing troops – and David Willey’s impending international retirement is also a reminder that milestones like these don’t come around forever in the cut-throat world of professional sport. So there’s no better time than now for the reigning world champions to demonstrate their abilities. Especially if, in doing so, they can make the progress of their main adversaries a little less peaceful.

Form guide: Australia on a hot streak, England less so

Australia WWWWL (last five ODIs completed, most recent first)
England FAVLA

In the spotlight: Joe Root and Adam Zampa

Speaking during preparation, Joe Racine insisted that, ‘man for man’, England are still a better team than Australia. However, his admonition, “when we play our best stuff” might as well have been a deeply self-referential comment. Root is not the only senior player to have suffered a dip in form during this most desperate of campaigns, but his downturn still seems the most surprising, as he has never really had any ups and downs over the course of his formidable career. Remember when his failure to convert endless Test fifties into hundreds was the biggest complaint about his record? Right now, England’s stealthiest run accumulator is unable to even get out of the powerplay – in 16 ODIs since the start of 2022, he has been dismissed eight times in the first ten overs, for a total of 33 runs from 72 balls, which are unsustainable numbers by the standards of any international number 3, let alone one of England’s greatest.

In their former form as ODI world champions, England would almost certainly have considered Adam Zampa a marked man. They never used to stand on ceremony against their opponents’ stars – look at the treatment of Kuldeep Yadav (1 for 72) and Rashid Khan (0 for 110) in 2019, who both took revenge notable this time. And after a difficult start to this tournament against India and South Africa, Zampa has grown in confidence with each subsequent outing – his current tally of 16 wickets includes 15 in four consecutive victories, giving him twice as many as Australia’s second most effective bowler, Cummins. and Josh Hazlewood (eight each). Zampa has also recently had success against these opponents. Although England were rather distracted by their T20 World Cup victory when they last met in an ODI series in November 2022, they still emerged with 11 wickets at 11:90 am in a 3-0 whitewash.

Team News: Maxwell, Marsh out for Australia

England may be tempted to look to the future and give opportunities to some of the players most likely to feature in the post-World Cup rebuild – notably their under-30 duo of Harry Brook and Gus Atkinson, who was overtaken. in good shape despite wearing a cast on his little finger following a blow received during training on Thursday. But that would require some reporting omissions in the existing XI, and the feeling in the build-up is that the players who got England into this mess will, for now, be given a chance to atone for their shortcomings. Brydon Carse, Reece Topley’s replacement, is waiting in the wings, but Mark Wood – three-year contract and all – is just as likely to be unleashed once again with Ashes-style orders to ‘launch rockets’.

England (probable): 1 Jonny Bairstow, 2 Dawid Malan, 3 Joe Root, 4 Ben Stokes, 5 Jos Buttler (captain, week), 6 Moeen Ali / Harry Brook, 7 Liam Livingstone, 8 Chris Woakes, 9 David Willey, 10 Mark Wood, 11 Adil Rashid

play2:07

All sorts of upheavals for Australia in their preparation, with Maxwell’s golf buggy concussion now compounded by Marsh returning home for family reasons. This leaves their 15-man squad very short, a point Captain Cummins has commented on, but the short-term solutions are pretty obvious. Two other all-rounders, Marcus Stoinis and Cameron Green, are the obvious replacements, leaving Sean Abbott once again on the sidelines, while Steven Smith and Marnus Labuschagne should move up a place each in the order, at numbers 3 and 4 respectively . .

Australia (probable): 1 David Warner, 2 Travis Head, 3 Steven Smith, 4 Marnus Labuschagne, 5 Josh Inglis (week), 6 Marcus Stoinis, 7 Cameron Green, 8 Pat Cummins (captain), 9 Mitchell Starc, 10 Adam Zampa, 11Josh Hazlewood

Location and conditions: Red or black?

As is often the case in Ahmedabad, the type of soil will be a key factor in the play of the pitch. Black soil promises slow and low, red soil promises fast and bouncy, or so the tradition says. At least there won’t be the smog problems hampering preparations for the Bangladesh-Sri Lanka conflict in Delhi. A toasty 35 degrees is promised during the day in Ahmedabad, with some prospect of dew under the lights in the evening – although England in particular has already been surprised by this assumption.

Stats and trivia: Buttler closes in on 5,000

• Australia have won six of their previous nine meetings with England in the 50-over World Cup, including four in a row from 2003 to the group stage in 2019. However, England won the most recent clash , by eight wickets at Edgbaston in the 2019 semi-final.

• Jos Buttler needs 72 more runs to become the third-fastest Englishman to 5,000 ODI runs, in 150 innings. Overall, only six wicketkeepers have 5,000 or more runs in ODIs.

• David Willey, who confirmed his retirement from international cricket at the end of the tournament, needs six more wickets in maximum three matches to reach 100 in ODIs.

Quotes

“That was a few months ago. It’s done: it’s a new match, a new tournament. But I still think a healthy rivalry is good – especially our playing group. We’re a pretty relaxed and calm, so when we get a little more excited, actually, I don’t think it’s such a bad thing.”
Patrick Cummins says Australia has risen from the ashes.

“It’s just been a disaster, and there’s no point sugarcoating it because that’s probably what you’re all going to write about anyway – and it’s true.”
Ben Stokes told the media that their assessment of England’s World Cup campaign was correct.