Australia earned an 8-wicket win over Bangladesh in their last group-stage engagement, ahead of their semifinal encounter against South Africa in the ICC ODI World Cup 2023.
Bangladesh made 306 runs for the loss of eight wickets batting first before Australi achieved the target with 32 deliveries to spare.
Follow all the action from the ICC CRICKET WORLD CUP 2023 including the WORLD CUP SCHEDULE, WORLD CUP 2023 RESULTS, and ICC CRICKET WORLD CUP POINTS TABLE. Players are vying to top the WORLD CUP 2023 MOST RUNS and WORLD CUP 2023 MOST WICKETS charts.
Australian skipper Pat Cummins said that the team was elated to get their seventh win on the trot heading into the knockout game against the Proteas in the ICC showpiece.
“It feels great. We thought it was a really good wicket and thought we could get that total. 7 wins in a row, I think chasing 300 was something really special and everything is clicking together,” the Australian captain said.
Australia have had some remarkable performances from many players in their squad as they came back from a disappointing start to the campaign to book their berth in the semis as they managed to string seven victories together.
“All 15 players have played this tournament now and we go up to Kolkata, re-assess and perhaps have a few selection headaches there,” he added.
Cummins also commended Mitchell Marsh, who scored an unbeaten 177 runs to help the men from down under enter the knockouts on the back of a win.
“Marsh played beautifully. The tempo he played with was sustainable and the way he finished off the innings, it’s a scary prospect to have him next week,” he concluded.
Bangladesh will return home after crashing out of the tournament with just two wins from nine outings. Stand-in skipper, Najmul Hossain Shanto, said that the game would have been different had his team got to 40-odd runs extra on the board and pointed to two runouts, one of himself and the other of Mahamudullah, as the turning point in the game.
“I think the two run-outs changed the momentum. We got off to a good start but lost momentum because of those run-outs. If we had scored 340-350 it would have been different,” he said.
“Our fast bowlers bowled well but the spinners weren’t as effective in the middle overs, we want to improve our bowling in the middle overs.”
Shanto praised Mahmuduallah, who has done well in the tournament and veteran all-rounder Shakib al Hasan for their performance in the World Cup.
“Mahmuduallah batted well in this World Cup and Shakib also bowled well in a couple of games.”
Shanto added that they will assess what went wrong at the showpiece event and will try to address the same.
“It’s disappointing, we didn’t play our best in this tournament. We will see what we can do better from now. We have to improve as a team. It is not about individual performances, we want to look at the 9 games and work on areas we need to improve”, he concluded.
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