Josh Hazlewood has said Australia could try and manipulate any margin of victory over Scotland to try and Knock England Out- of the T20 World Cup 2024 though his captain Mitchell Marsh could face a ban if found guilty of doing so by match officials,
The exact sums won't be known until England have played Oman and Namibia, and a defeat against either will end their campaign. But there is a good chance a scenario emerges whereby Australia could win their final group match by a narrow-enough margin to ensure Scotland go through at England's expense on net run-rate, with the teams level on five points each.
In this tournament you potentially come up against England at some stage again," Hazlewood said after Australia confirmed their Super Eight spot with a clinical win over Namibia. "They're probably one of the top few teams on their day and we've had some real struggles against them in T20 cricket, so if we can get them out of the tournament that's in our best interest as well as probably everyone else.
It'll be interesting to see. We've never really been in this position before as a team, I don't think, so whether we have discussions or not, we'll just try and play it again the way we did tonight. That'll be up to [other] people, not me.
But if Australia decided to do so, they would risk Marsh being banned for up to two of their three Super Eight fixtures. He could be charged under Article 2.11 of the ICC's code of conduct, which is designed to prevent the manipulation of games for "inappropriate strategic or tactical reasons… such as when a team deliberately loses a pool match in an ICC Event in order to affect the standings of other teams in that ICC Event.
The code of conduct clarifies it could also apply to "the inappropriate manipulation of a net run rate" and the captain would be held responsible, and charged with a Level Two offence. Depending on the severity of the offence, this could carry a minimum sanction of a 50% match fee fine, with a maximum of four demerit points and two suspension points - which would rule Marsh out of Australia's first two Super Eight matches.
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