Defending champions England will face Australia in the 36th match of the ongoing ODI World Cup 2023 on Saturday. The second game of the day will be played at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad from 2 PM IST onwards.
When the two Ashes rivals clash, a lot will be on the line for the adversaries who last faced off in a battle for the ‘Urn’ in July this year.
In the last four matches, five-time champions Australia have shown their batting might to turn around a floundering campaign with four successive wins and are now placed at the third spot with eight points.
England, on the other hand, have faced the ignominy of four defeats, primarily due to their inexplicable batting failure, having being bowled out for 170 or less in each of their last three games.
Ahead of the marquee clash, both the teams are battling different sets of problems.
Australia will be forced to make replacements following the unavailability of two of their key players — Mitchell Marsh and Glenn Maxwell.
England, meanwhile, have tried all permutations and combinations in pursuit of that elusive win and yet another change in the XI is expected when they return to the venue where their campaign started on a poor note, having lost to New Zealand in the opener.
While their fate is hanging by a mathematical calculation, last-placed England will have to play out of their skin against Australia to keep their hopes of qualifying for the Champions Trophy in 2025.
Only the top seven placed teams in the World Cup will qualify for the 50-over tournament in Pakistan and England will hope to find their bearings when they face old foes Australia next.
History is stacked against them as England have lost 87 times in their 155 meetings with Australia in ODIs, while being 3-6 behind in World Cups.
However, the English team has often managed to find its best against the Aussies. A case in point being the fiercely-contested Ashes this year which ended 2-2.
Stokes told reporters on the eve of their World Cup clash against old foes Australia that “we’ve been crap”.
“I think the problem is that we’ve been crap. To be honest with you, we’ve been crap. Everything we’ve tried throughout this World Cup, through trying to put pressure back onto the opposition in a way in which we know, or trying to soak up the pressure in a different way, which we know we’ve done before and been successful with, it’s just not worked,” Stokes said.
Australia captain Pat Cummins on Friday said the teams should have been allowed more players instead of 15 in the squad considering this World Cup’s duration.
“Yeah, to be honest. It’s a two-month tournament. You wouldn’t want to be in a position like New Zealand. They have had some injuries and luckily, they’ve been able to hold Kane (Williamson) in the squad. But if suddenly you had to rule him out, I think that wouldn’t be good for cricket or World Cup.”
“It’s not like you can poach players from other countries, so I always think of as many players as you need, you should be able to pick from,” Cummins said during his pre-match press conference.
In that context, Cummins termed the absence of Maxwell and Marsh as not ideal in a phase where the Aussies are trying to earn a semifinal berth.
“Yeah, it’s not ideal. Both have been star players of the tournament at different times. We knew at the start of the tournament we were going to need a full squad of 15.”
“I’m not even sure we’ve played the same 11 two games in a row through injury or selection. But we knew over a two-month tournament you’re going to have to chop and change a bit,” said Cummins.
