Adelaide: Australia beat Afghanistan by 4 runs on Friday and Glenn Maxwell became the Player of the Month 2022. As Afghanistan had fought hard and lost the game by just 4 runs, it has made Australia’s NRR negative. Now Australia’s chances of reaching the quarter-finals depend on England vs Sri Lanka.
Rashid Khan has jeopardized Australia’s apparent chances of sailing into the quarter-finals by striking at the end. He scored 48 runs off 23 balls and his team lost by just 4 runs. This has put the Australian NRR at a disadvantage and it is possible that the semi-finalists will be decided on that basis if England win.
Glenn Maxwell hopes Sri Lanka beat England
Glenn Maxwell said they hope Sri Lanka will do the job. “Making an impact is nice. During the day it was quite slow and spinning, it took a while. It was quite difficult to press the issue. We got to about the 12th mark where we just had to put the total on the table to make sure we gave ourselves a chance to win the game. Although we tried to go hard, they bowled very well in the last four overs.
“They executed their plan and it was difficult to get away. We will follow it (England vs Sri Lanka), we will put ourselves in this situation but hopefully Sri Lanka can do the job for us,” he added.
Afghanistan will fight hard against Australia
Australia had scored 168 runs after batting. Afghanistan’s bowlers had put up a tough fight as they dismissed most of the Australian bowlers cheaply. Mitchell Marsh (45) and Glenn Maxwell (54) were the only batsmen to score. David Warner and Marcus Stoinis scored 25 runs each and apart from them, no player even reached double figures.
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