Top knocks Marcus Stoinis and Travis Head guided Australia to a five-wicket win over Scotland in their T20 World Cup 2024, Group B match on Sunday (IST) in St Lucia. Chasing 181, Australia lost two early wickets but Head and Stoinis’ fiery partnership brought the 2021 champions back into the game.
Stoinis scored 59 off 29 balls while Head scored 68 off 49 balls. For Scotland, Mark Watt and Safyaan Sharif scalped two wickets each. With this loss, Scotland got knocked out from the tournament as the defending champions England entered the Super 8s, due to a better net run-rate.
Mitch Marsh: We knew that we had qualified. We spoke about sticking to our plans. Scotland are a good team, they have improved a lot and we certainly wanted to respect them. We just wanted to stay consistent and if we fail, we fail our way. Whenever our team is challenged, it brings the best out of us. Today we were challenged and it was a good experience and a good game of cricket. We start fresh now. T20 is a hard format and you need to stay focused at all times. (On chat about England) It was all more externally than internally, we won today. That’s all that matters.
Marcus Stoinis | Player of the Match – The plan was usual, get yourself in, play nice shots, try to hit the ball hard and then assess the situation. There was a strong breeze and that was the area to hit, the pitch was really good and I thought the Scots batted well. We (himself and Head) were just talking about batting along, take on one bowler and I think he changed the game with those three sixes. I’ve been playing consistently, getting chances over the last 3-4 months and in the IPL, that’s helped me keep up with the form and get the runs.