Pat Cummins, the captain of Australia, said on Sunday that the five-time world champions “got to start winning and start winning quick” in order to salvage their faltering World Cup campaign. However, his statement is also applicable to Sri Lanka, whom Australia will face today.
Due to the fact that they have been defeated in both of their matches to this point, one in Chennai and the other in Lucknow, Australia is currently ranked ninth in the standings. On Monday, they will compete against Sri Lanka in Lucknow; the island nation is now ranked seventh in the standings and is also looking for their first victory.
The Australian team experienced their worst loss at a World Cup, a 134-run thrashing at the hands of South Africa, in their first two matches. The loss to India, who is hosting the tournament, was by six wickets.
A tournament that lasts for two months and takes place throughout the Indian summer is known as the Indian Premier League. A number of Australian players have competed in the league and created a name for themselves there.
However, Cummins stated that the format of a Twenty20 match was quite different from that of an international one-day match, and that his team has been having trouble reading the surfaces of the pitch during this major event.
Cummins told media before Monday’s match against Sri Lanka, “It’s a tricky one, ODI cricket compared to T20s – played over half the game in daylight, and half at night,” referring to the difference between the two formats of the game.
“Yeah, (we) discover that these wickets are difficult to read as well. Sometimes they have an awful appearance but play well, and sometimes the opposite is true. Sometimes they appear to be spinning, but they end up being flat. Therefore, it is not easy. Sometimes, all you can do is adjust your strategy as you go.
They have not yet scored 200 runs despite the fact that they have David Warner and Steve Smith in their lineup, who are both formidable hitters.
“We’re obviously 0-2, so we’ve got to start winning and start winning quick,” Cummins further stated.
Every game is starting to feel more and more like the championship. You have to come out on top in the vast majority of them.
The preliminary findings paint a bleak picture for Australia as a whole.
None of their hitters have reached the half-century mark, with Smith having the highest score (46 runs) against India and Marnus Labuschagne tying that meagre record in the thrashing they received against South Africa.
They have also been limited by poor fielding efforts, which has been a problem.
In the match against India, Virat Kohli was out on 12 before going on to score the winning run with his score of 85.
If the catch had been made, India, which needed only 200 runs to win, would have been in a precarious position at 20-4.
It got even worse when they played South Africa, where five opportunities were wasted.
Australia, which need 312 runs to win, fell to a score of 70-6 and was forced to engage in a damage containment exercise in order to shore up their run rate.
On Monday, they will play another team that does not have a victory to their name: Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is a team that has had no trouble scoring runs, hitting 326 against South Africa and 344 against Pakistan.
Unfortunately for the team that won the World Cup in 1996, they let up a record-setting 428 runs to the Proteas, while Pakistan’s pursuit to win by six wickets was the most successful chase in the history of the competition. Pakistan won by six wickets.
In addition to the inability of their bowlers to complement the efforts of their batters, Sri Lanka’s woes are compounded by the fact that their regular skipper, Dasun Shanaka, has been sidelined with a thigh injury for the duration of their World Cup campaign. Kusal Mendis, who has been in excellent form recently, will take over as captain of Sri Lanka after Chamika Karunaratne was called up to replace Shanaka.
In June of the previous year, Sri Lanka hosted a five-match series against Australia and emerged victorious with a 3-2 match record.
At the 2019 World Cup match between the two teams, which took place at The Oval, Australia prevailed with an 87-run victory with relative ease.
“The opportunity now is we’ve got some teams we haven’t played for a while that we’ve had a lot of success against and we can be really confident when we go out there,” Cummins told reporters.