Toss Australia won the toss and decided to bowl vs Scotland
For a couple of days last week there was much talk about net run rate shenanigans, but any prospect of that was put to bed by England’s thumping win over Oman. And, Josh Hazlewood had been taken completely out of context anyway.
Hazlewood is one of two players Australia have rested for this match with Pat Cummins also rotated out with an eye on the condensed Super Eight schedule. Mitchell Starc, who missed the Namibia game with a calf niggle, returns alongside a first outing of the tournament for left-arm spinner Ashton Agar.
It means that for the first time in the competition Australia will have two frontline spinners with Agar to partner Adam Zampa supplemented by Glenn Maxwell. Cameron Green and Josh Inglis are the two players who won’t have featured ahead of the Super Eight.
“Potentially, in an ideal world, you’d love to get the balance of being able to give everyone a game but you do need to offset that with making sure you give the guys that are playing the prep that they need and the opportunity to be able to keep their rhythm and continuity,” chief selector George Bailey told reports in St Lucia. “We talked about, ‘let’s see if we can give Greeny a game’, but we are really confident that he’s in a good place. And if he does need to come in, his work in the IPL will hold him in good stead.”
Scotland will be setting a target in their bid for a famous win after Mitchell Marsh won the toss. Richie Berrington named an unchanged XI which means that Safyaan Sharif keeps his place ahead of Brad Currie.
“For us, the chatter is out of our control,” Berrington said when asked about watching the rain fall earlier in Antigua. “We knew we had to beat some of the best teams to qualify.”
Australia 1 David Warner, 2 Travis Head, 3 Mitchell Marsh (capt), 4 Glenn Maxwell, 5 Marcus Stoinis, 6 Tim David, 7 Matthew Wade (wk), 8 Ashton Agar, 9 Mitchell Starc, 10 Nathan Ellis, 11 Adam Zampa
Scotland 1 George Munsey, 2 Michael Jones, 3 Brandon McMullen, 4 Richie Berrington (capt), 5 Matthew Cross (wk), 6 Michael Leask, 7 Chris Greaves, 8 Mark Watt, 9 Chris Sole, 10 Brad Wheal, 11 Safyaan Sharif