With defending champions and hosts Australia failing to advance to the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup, former Australian captain Michael Clarke has termed the Aaron Finch-led side playing a very “un-Australian” style of cricket. While Australia ended up with seven points in their group, with the loss against New Zealand and a washout match against England hurting the hosts most.
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“I think Australians in general, on the biggest stage under the most amount of pressure, always put in on the line and have a crack. We’re not scared to lose. Yet we picked an aggressive 11 in this World Cup squad yet played so defensively. Very un-Australian,” Clarke said on the radio show Big Sports Breakfast.
While the hosts started the tournament with a 89-run loss against New Zealand in the tournament, it was followed by a seven-wicket win over Sri Lanka, With the group seeing New Zealand and England too fighting for the semis spot, Australian hopes were dented with the Australia-England being washed out due to rain. The hosts needed to score a win by huge margins over Ireland and Afghanistan in an effort to increase their net run rate but the team could only score a 42-run win over Ireland, despite having them on the mat at 25 for 5 at one stage, and a narrow four-run win over Afghanistan.
“The frustrating thing for me is – I think they missed a trick against Ireland … and then against Afghanistan, I don’t know what I was watching. It felt like they were doing everything they could just to beat Afghanistan. I know you can never just wipe the floor with a team and have that attitude but they had to. They had to walk out there against Afghanistan and say, ‘we’re going to make 200 and bowl you out for 100’ but they just didn’t have that aggressiveness, they didn’t have that fire in the belly, even in the field they looked a bit sluggish in the field,” Clarke said on the show.
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Clarke also termed Australia dropping Mitchell Starc in the match against Afghanistan as a mistake. He was also of the view that decisions made in the last few months need to be looked at. “I just think they got a number of things wrong … and leaving Mitchell Starc out of the team against Afghanistan was one of those things. They’ve got a lot to look at, it’s not just the players. I think some of the decisions made over the past few months leading up to the World Cup they need to look at,” said Clarke.
While none of the Australian batsmen featured in the top five scoring run-getters after the group stage, captain Aaron Finch could only score a total of 107 runs including one fifty in three innings.
Former Australian captain Ricky Ponting believes that Glen Maxwell could be the next Australian captain in white-ball cricket.
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“He’s [Maxwell] obviously done a fair bit in IPL and in BBL. I think that’s probably the logical one. I couldn’t see Pat Cummins wanting to take it on. I was a little bit surprised he took the one-day stuff on to be honest as well just with workload and stuff and how many games he potentially misses, so maybe you look to Maxy (Glenn Maxwell). I saw Mitchell Marsh last week had taken his name out. He said he wanted to play and not have to worry about it. I think in the current group, it probably would be Maxy,” Ponting told Foxcricket.
