Australia v Bangladesh Report Card

Featuring Oscar Wilde, consistency in asking for a wicket, Piers Morgan rulings and Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar Wilde
Grade: B

Australia made two changes for their final group stage match. Rested in the aftermath of his match-winning double century in the previous game was Glenn Maxwell. A bit rich, frankly, for a guy who wasn’t even running between the wickets in his last game to need a rest in this one, but there you are.

Mitchell Starc also sat out the match against Bangladesh. He was replaced by Sean Abbott, a man how, given his name, is surprisingly hairy. And irreligious.

Pat Cummins won the toss and elected to inflict a wicketless power play on Bangladesh. A general inability to take early wickets has been a consistent trend for Australia throughout the tournament, and at 2/170 in the 28th over, Bangladesh looked momentarily capable of amassing around 350.

But only very momentarily, because that total of 2/170 was reached with the first run of an attempted two by captain Najmul Shanto. And the second run was cut short by an excellent piece of ground fielding by Marnus Labuschagne that sent the Bangladesh skipper on his way.

As if to prove that wasn’t a fluke, Labuschagne also took the next wicket, running out Bangladesh’s best batter throughout the tournament, Mahmudullah. 

As Oscar Wilde once wrote: “To lose one key wicket to a Marnus run out may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” (Wilde, Oscar, The Importance of Being Marnused, 1898)