After Australia’s narrow victory over Afghanistan, all-rounder Glenn Maxwell is hoping that Sri Lanka beat England by a good margin so that the defending champions can enter the semi-finals.
Riding on Maxwell's 54* off 32 balls followed by Adam Zampa (2-22) and Josh Hazlewood's (2-33) brilliant spells, the hosts defeated Afghanistan by four runs in their last group match at the Adelaide Oval on Friday (November 4).
However, the close win didn’t help their cause as Australia’s net run rate is still negative. On the other hand, England have a significant advantage over Australia in the net run rate column and the Jos Buttler-led side just needs to beat Sri Lanka at SCG on Saturday (November 5) to knock Australia out of the tournament.
"We got to about the 12th over mark where we just had to put a total on the board to make sure we gave ourselves a chance of winning the game. Even though we were trying to go hard, they bowled extremely well in the last four overs. They executed their plans and it was hard to get away. We'll be following it (England vs Sri Lanka), we put ourselves in this situation, but hopefully, Sri Lanka can do the job for us," Maxwell said at the post-match presentation ceremony.
Chasing 169 to win, Rahmanullah Gurbaz (30 off 17 balls) and Gulbadin Naib (39 off 23 balls) produced cameos to take Afghanistan to 99/3 after 13.1 overs. In the end, however, Rashid Khan smashed an unbeaten 48 off 23 deliveries to take Afghanistan close to the target.
"Afghanistan played really well, they struck the ball really cleanly. At the start, they put us under pressure in the powerplay. We were able to hold them back but then there was some pretty clean hitting towards the back end and gave us a bit of a scare," said Maxwell.
Earlier, Glenn Maxwell's half-century helped Australia post a total of 168/8 on the board.
"It was nice to have an impact in the field. I knew I wasn't going to have much of an impact with the ball with the conditions they were in. To have an impact is nice. During the day, it was quite slow and taking spin, it was holding up a little bit. It was quite hard to press the issue," Maxwell said.
(With ANI inputs)
