Australia warned over ‘fix’ aim to eliminate England
Manipulating Scotland result would lead to ban for Marsh In our best interests to get rid of old enemy, says Hazlewood
Australia captain Mitchell Marsh will face a ban if his team are found guilty of manipulating their result against Scotland to knock England out of the T20 World Cup.
Marsh could be hit with a leveltwo charge under the International Cricket Council’s code of conduct if the match referee believes his team deliberately concocted a result in winning against or losing to Scotland on Sunday in order to eliminate England on run rate.
After Australia confirmed their place in the Super Eights with a big win over Namibia yesterday, fast bowler Josh Hazlewood spiced up the old rivalry by saying it would be in his team’s “best interest” to game the system so England did not progress to the Super Eights.
“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,” Hazlewood said. “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. It’s a weird thing to say. Whether we have discussions or not or we just try to play it again the way we did tonight. Again, that’ll be up to people [the management], not me.”
Hazlewood happily took the opportunity to wind up England – who have to win both their group games against Oman and Namibia to have any hope of rescuing an ailing campaign – and those present felt he was being serious.
England’s Australian coach, Matthew Mott, knows Hazlewood well and described him as a “good bloke” who was probably talking “tongue in cheek”, but he might not be so accommodating on Sunday if Australia and Scotland cook up a result that knocks his team out and probably costs him his job.
This scenario could play out because England’s final group game against Namibia finishes before Australia and Scotland play in St Lucia. It is an offence under 2.1.1 of the ICC code of conduct for a team to make “any attempt to manipulate an international match for inappropriate strategic or tactical reasons such as when a team deliberately loses a pool match in an ICC event in order to affect the standings of other teams”.
It is punishable by the captain receiving a fine of 50-100 per cent of his match fee and one or two suspension points (one suspension point equals a one-match ban).
It fans the flames between England and Australia just 11 months after the stumping controversy at Lord’s, which was reopened recently by the release of the behind-the-scenes documentary The Test. There was also niggle in the England-australia game at Barbados last Saturday, with Matthew Wade receiving an official reprimand after arguing with the umpires over a dead ball.
Mott carefully avoided any attempt to put pressure on the match referee on Sunday, Jeff Crowe, and also did not want to be drawn into England-australia verbals. “I actually don’t think it is ever going to play out. I am sure the will to win every game will come to the fore,” he said.
Australia hammered Namibia by nine wickets, bundling them out for 72 and knocking off their target in 5.4 overs. They have not lost to an associate nation since 1983 and usually kill them off clinically and professionally at ICC events. It would be unlike Australia to slip up and, after Hazlewood’s comments, all eyes will be on their performance.
It will all be immaterial if England fail to beat Oman tonight at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium or lose to Namibia on Saturday, and Jos Buttler warned his team this week not to look too far ahead to the runrate calculations.
England must win both matches to go level on five points with Scotland but also overhaul their net run rate. It is hard to predict what they will need to achieve but roughly they have to turn around a 120-run deficit over the course of those two games and hope Scotland’s run-rate takes a pounding against Australia.
“Regardless of any outside noise, qualification, run-rates – essentially, we’ve got to win this game,” Mott said. “We’ve spoken really well about that, Jos spoke really well about needing to earn the right to push hard in this game. It’s going to be a good wicket by the looks of it. We go in with a lot of confidence. We’ve played good T20 cricket for a while now, it didn’t quite come off against Australia last time. I think we’ve got our structure in place.”
Reece Topley had a long bowl in training yesterday and should come in for either Chris Jordan or Mark Wood. It is unlikely England will change their top seven after only one innings at the World Cup.