England’s right-arm speedster Mark Wood expressed his hope that arch-rivals Australia would play “hard and fair” in their last ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024 group-stage fixture against Scotland.
Australia will face Scotland in their last group-stage fixture on Sunday which could decide England’s fate in the T20 World Cup 2024 even if they manage to beat Namibia in their remaining group match.
Scotland are currently second in Group B standings with five points in three matches while England climbed to the third with three points in as many matches.
The defending champions bolstered their net run rate by decimating Oman by eight wickets and 101 balls to spare.
Earlier, Australian pacer Josh Hazlewood hinted at the possibility of exploiting England’s difficulty in the tournament in the post-match press conference.
“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,” stated Hazlewood.
“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’s I think.
“It will be interesting to see, never really been in this position before as a team I don’t think.
“Whether we have discussions or not, or we just try and play again the way we played tonight, that will be up to people, not me.”
Reacting to Hazlewood’s comments, Mark Wood insisted that Australia would not deliberately lose to Scotland.
“I’m absolutely confident Australia will play the game the hardest, that’s the Australian way, that they’ll play hard but fair and try and get the win,” said Wood.
“I think that’s part of being England and Australia, isn’t it?” said Wood.
“I think actually I saw it more as a respect thing if I’m honest that he was saying that England have done well against Australia in the recent past and thinks we’re a big threat and a big team so I have no problem with it.”
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