Will Australia yield to temptation vs Scotland to eliminate England? It could cost them dearly

However, if Australia are found to be making an attempt to “game the system”, it could be costly for the side in the Super 8 stages.

England are currently in 4th spot in Group B, having accumulated just one point from two matches. Their Net Run Rate is at -1.800 while Scotland have five points and a NRR of 2.164 with one more game remaining.

This means that England will need to win their last two games. But they also have to hope that Scotland lose their final group game to Australia on Saturday.

Even if Scotland lose to Australia, England will have to win their last two games against Oman and Namibia by certain margins so that their NRR is boosted.

This means that Australia could make England’s job tricky by winning by a slimmer margin against Scotland.

Hazlewood says eliminating England is in Australia’s interest

“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 and 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,” Josh Hazlewood said at a press conference after Australia’s win over Namibia on Wednesday. “It’ll be interesting to see. We’ve never really been in this position before as a team, I don’t think, so whether we have discussions or not, we’ll just try and play it again the way we did tonight. That’ll be up to people, not me.”

"If we can get them out of the tournament, that's in our best interest" 👀

Australia bowler Josh Hazlewood says he'd be open to the possibility of easing up on Scotland in their last group game to help knock out England. pic.twitter.com/bfXEH9evjr

— Sky Sports Cricket (@SkyCricket) June 12, 2024

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Hazlewood went on to add: “Whether you get close and you just knock it around and drag it out… There’s a few options there but… to take confidence from winning and winning well, I think that’s almost more important than potentially trying to knock someone else out. They’ve still got a lot to do on their behalf as well, so I think it’ll become clearer the closer we get to that sort of stuff.”

Hazlewood went on to point out that it was strange that run rates from the group stages do not carry over to the Super 8 stage.

“It’s a little bit strange that it doesn’t go through the tournament. This is probably the first T20 World Cup I’ve played that’s set up this way, or first World Cup in general that’s set up this way, so it’s a little bit different. I think the work that you do in the round games and if you go through undefeated and have a good net run-rate, doesn’t really account for much once you’re in the Super Eights. So, yeah, it’s a strange one but that’s how it is.”

What happens if Australia are deemed guilty of trying to engineer England’s ouster

While it remains to be seen whether Australia actually yield to the temptation to play slowly and engineer the ouster of England, should they do so, it will be costly for the team from Down Under.

The team could see captain Mitchell Marsh being banned for up to two of their three Super Eight fixtures. As per the ICC code of conduct (Article 2.11) which deals with “attempts to manipulate an International Match for inappropriate strategic or tactical reasons”… “Team Captain of any team guilty of such conduct shall be held responsible (and subject to sanction) for any offence found to have been committed under this Article.”

This means Marsh could be fined a minimum sanction of a 50% match fee fine, with a maximum of four demerit points and two suspension points – which would rule Marsh out of Australia’s first two Super Eight matches.