Australia started off their CWC 2023 campaign with two losses against India and South Africa, respectively. The five time World Champion looked like a shadow of that great team. Australia batting order did not come good in the first two matches. They won against Sri Lanka with difficulty in a low scoring match. Australia needed a huge performance from batters at Bengaluru against Pakistan.
They exactly found the same with openers David Warner and Mitchell Marsh scoring huge hundreds. Still, Australia did not make the use of full potential of the start. They made 367/9 but the start of 259 for first wicket in 33.5 overs, had potential for them to score 400-425. Their middle-order could not really make use of the situation but openers did enough for them to win without much difficulty. Australia won the match against Pakistan by 62 runs.
Earlier, Pakistan won the toss and elected to field first. Babar Azam wanted to make use of conditions under light when dew arrives in Bengaluru. Australia needed to score huge score to put Pakistan under pressure. David Warner kept hitting bowlers from the first over. Mitchell Marsh also joined him after taking few balls as he failed in earlier matches.
David Warner scored 163 runs from 124 balls and Marsh scored 121 from 108 balls. Rest of them did not score much as Shaheen Shah Afridi restricted them by taking 5 wickets in the middle and final overs. Australia ended up scoring 367/9 in 50 overs.
In the chase, Pakistan needed a huge start and they got a decent one. Abdullah Shafique(64) and Imam-ul-Haq(70) have put on 134 runs in partnership in 21.1 overs. But they played too many dot balls. Mohammad Rizwan(46), Saud Shakeel(30), Iftikhar Ahmed(26) could not really rotate the strike to put pressure on Australia bowlers. Pakistan scored 305 in 45.3 overs. Adam Zampa(4/53), Pat Cummins(2/62), Marcus Stoinis(2/40), Josh Hazlewood(1/37) and Mitchell Starc(1/65) took wickets for Australia.
Australia with this win came up to 4th position from 8th position. Now, only Sri Lanka did not win any game in this CWC 2023 after playing 3 matches. Even Netherlands and Afghanistan managed to win one match each. David Warner won Player of the Match award for his destructive person. While Pakistan never knew for their fielding, even Australia dropped easy catches. Some stunning catches have been taken by them but this is not the level of Aussie fielding. Let’s see how they will perform later in this tournament.