Australia bounced back from their continuous losses to secure their first victory in the ICC Cricket World Cup by defeating Sri Lanka by 5 wickets in Lucknow. The Aussie bowlers came back at the halfway mark reducing the Sri Lankan scoring card from 125-0 to 209 all-out. While Pat Cummins and Co. would be relieved to have their World Cup campaign underway, Sri Lanka find themselves in deep trouble, first losing their captain to injury and now their third match on the trot.
Sri Lanka was given an early advantage by their openers Kusal Perera and Pathum Nissanka who raced to 125 runs for no loss in 20 overs, however out of the 9 batters that followed them 8 could not even get to double figures.
The Australian bowlers led by Adam Zampa broke the back of the Lankan middle order who took 4 wickets, Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc wiped off the tail to complete a Lankan collapse. Sri Lanka’s bowlers were mostly ineffective barring Dilshan Madhushanka who took 3 wickets.
Australia chased down the target of 210 runs with ease in 35.2 overs. Australia won the match by 5 wickets as Mitchell Marsh & Josh Inglis struck half centuries and looked in complete control of the run chase despite the early setback of David Warner & Steve Smith who couldn’t trouble the scorers.
The energy on the field was great- Pat Cummins
During the post match presentation, Pat Cummins was quite happy with the team’s performance and with the bowlers especially who displayed a never to say die attitude. Pat Cummins made it clear that the outside noise doesn’t bother the group at all.
“Nothing said much on the back of two losses. The energy on the field was great. They started very well. We bowled decently. We stayed at it. The bowlers hit the deck hard. I think high 300 was par on that. There is a lot of people watching this. Outside noise doesn’t bother us a lot. All parts of the game came together today. We would want to keep it up,” said Pat Cummins.