T20 World Cup 2021: England crush Australia by 8 wickets, inch closer to semifinals
. Jos Buttler hammered a ruthless unbeaten 32-ball 71 to complement a superlative performance from the bowlers as England squashed Australia by 8 wickets in their Super 12 match to inch closer to a semifinal spot at the T20 World Cup on Saturday.
It was a thoroughly expert display by the ODI world champs as they bundled out Australia for 125 and then went back to revamp the target of 126 in 11.4 overs to consolidate their leading position in the Group 1 points table.Buttler and Jason Roy(22)hammered the Australian bowlers all around the park to amass 66 runs for no loss in the powerplay, the highest by any group up until now in the tournament.Buttler was the most dangerous of the England batters as he slammed 5 fours and as numerous sixes throughout his unbeaten knock, which is the fastest fifty in the tournament till now.Australia managed to get rid of Roy and Dawid Malan(8)however it made no distinction as Jonny Bairstow signed up with Buttler in sending their opponents on a leather hunt.Bairstow smashed 2 6s off Adam Zampa throughout his unbeaten 10-ball 16 run innings as England reached 126 for 2 to win the match with 50 balls to spare.England hence finished a hat-trick of wins, while Australia suffered their first loss of the tournament after beating South Africa and Sri Lanka in their previous two games.Earlier, Chris Woakes (2/23 )and Chris Jordan(3/17)rattled Australia’s top-order by getting rid of opener David Warner( 1), Steve Smith(1)and Glenn Maxwell (6) in the very first four overs prior to skipper Aaron Finch( 44 off 49 balls )resurrected the innings.Ashton Agar (20 ), Pat Cummins (12) and Mitchell Starc (13) then hit some lusty blows at the death to offer some respectability to the Australian total.Woakes was in action
early on as he caused a nick from Warner to deal the first blow and then pulled off a marvelous catch at mid-on to remove Steve Smith off Jordan’s bowling.Woakes then trapped Maxwell in front of wicket as Australia slumped to 15 for 3 in 4 overs.Leg-spinner Adil Rashid(1/19), who had actually opened the bowling for England, then went back to trap Marcus Stoinis LBW with a googly as Australia were tottering at 21 for 4 in 6.1 overs.Matthew Wade(18)then joined skipper Finch, taking Australia to 41 for four in 10 overs.Wade, however, died in the 12th over after holing out at long-on to Jason Roy off Liam Livingstone.Finch smashed back-to-back boundaries to cream 10 runs Tymal Mills, prior to getting another limit off Jordan in the next over.Agar then took off in the 17th over as he pulled one from Woakes over deep backward square leg before walloping him for another 6 over deep midwicket to score 20 runs of the over.He was back to the structure after being captured by Livingstone (1/15). Cummins then clobbered the very first 2 balls he faced for maximums to provide Australia momentum. But Jordan returned to get rid of Finch and Cummins in successive balls. Released at Sat, 30 Oct 2021 15:22:15 -0500
