Australia is set to be the last side to begin their T20 World Cup campaign on February 11 with a game against Ireland. The late start plays heavily into their favour considering the injury issues that fatigued the Australian squad coming into the tournament.
The much anticipated contest between an underdog Ireland and a struggling Australia which has been plagued by bad form and injuries for the past months is scheduled to take place on February 11 at the R Premadasa stadium in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
The afternoon fixture is set to commence at 3 PM Indian Standard Time (IST), with the toss slated for 02:30 PM.
Notably, Australian cricketing stalwarts Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood have already been ruled out of tomorrow’s fixture due to injury.
Cricketing experts and commentators at ESPN speculate that Australia would have been forced to miss out on including incredible players like Nathan Ellis and Adam Zampa in their playing XI as well, if they had been pushed to play against Ireland earlier in the tournament.
While many might expect for the upcoming fixture to be a one-sided affair, Australia’s recent poor form paired with an unfortunate string of injuries to some of their biggest players could provide the setting for one of the biggest upsets of modern cricket to be told by Ireland.
Australia vs Ireland ICC T20 World Cup: Form guide
When looking at their form over the past five games, Ireland actually looks better than Australia as the Kangaroos have failed to win even a single fixture in their past 5 games.
Australia LLLLL (last five completed matches, most recent first)
Ireland LWWLW
Australia are also struggling for form, having been hammered in Pakistan despite many of them coming from the BBL. Despite all of this one can never say it’s going to be an easy path for the Irish to challenge one of the successful cricket world cup teams of all time.
Ireland themselves will feel under some pressure after butchering a chance to beat Sri Lanka in Colombo in their tournament opener. They dropped seven catches and gave up 59 runs from their final four overs with the ball.
They were 105 for 2, albeit with the required run-rate climbing, but lost 8 for 38 to lose the game by 20 runs.
Australia vs Ireland ICC T20 World Cup: Head-to-head record
One of the other possible advantages Ireland may possess over Australia is that of being a rather big mystery to the Kangaroos. The two teams have only met twice in T20Is and only once in all international cricket since 2016.
| Category | Details |
| Total T20I Matches | 2 |
| Australia Wins | 2 |
| Ireland Wins | 0 |
| Last Meeting | T20 World Cup 2022 (Brisbane) |
As Australian teams looks to re-coup from a rather poor international run, Ireland will look to not repeat mistakes from its past and put together an all power attack to take out a presently vulnerable Australia
Australia vs Ireland ICC T20 World Cup: Pitch Report
So far in the World Cup, the Premadasa Stadium has demonstrated itself as a rather slow and sturdy surface that takes to spin quite well, providing a special advantage to off break and leg spinners in the early hours of the game.
The ball starts with an overspin early on and often finds some great grip on the surface, which makes it further difficult for batters to chase on this ground. Such tracks help the team batting first, as it is a low-scoring ground with average runs of around 150 in the first innings.
Australia vs Ireland ICC T20 World Cup: Probable XI
While the possibility of last-minute changes to the line-up have not been completely ruled out yet, this is what we expect the playing XIs for both sides to look like.
Australia (probable): 1 Travis Head, 2 Mitchell Marsh (capt), 3 Cameron Green, 4 Josh Inglis (wk), 5 Matt Renshaw, 6 Glenn Maxwell, 7 Marcus Stoinis, 8 Xavier Bartlett/Ben Dwarshuis, 9 Nathan Ellis, 10 Matt Kuhnemann, 11 Adam Zampa
Ireland (probable): 1 Paul Stirling (capt), 2 Ross Adair, 3 Harry Tector, 4 Lorcan Tucker (wk), 5 Curtis Campher, 6 Ben Calitz, 7 George Dockrell, 8 Gareth Delany, 9 Mark Adair, 10 Barry McCarthy, 11 Matthew Humphreys