England defeated Sri Lanka by four wickets to seal the second position in the semifinals. With the victory, they knocked out defending champions Australia from its year’s T20 World Cup. New Zealand was the first team to qualify for the semifinal.
Hales and Jos Buttler together piled up 75 runs in 44 deliveries but England had a tough time in the middle overs posting 129/6 in the 18th over. Chris Woakes hit the four in the final over. England went to the semi-finals and Australia got knocked out of the semifinals race.
Glenn Maxwell expressed his disappointment with Australia’s elimination
“There was a couple of games last year during the World Cup where we probably did I think – Bangladesh, West Indies, and Sri Lanka we played the complete game, almost back-to-back. They were clinical performances, we did the game quickly and were just pretty sharp in all areas of the game. We’ve probably missed a few opportunities this year. A couple of batters have got starts but haven’t gone big. I don’t think we’ve got any batters in the top five or six or ten-run scorers. We haven’t probably got the higher wicket takers either, it feels like we’ve just been chipping away, bits and pieces here and there.”
Australia got defeated to New Zealand in the very first game of the Super 12 stage. Several questions have been raised by the Australian media on the preparation for the tournament. Maxwell further stated it was the opponent team who executed their game in a better way.
England had been earlier defeated by Ireland but had won games against Afghanistan and New Zealand. They won over Sri Lanka and their current NRR is +0.547. In the points table, New Zealand tops the list followed by England.
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