Mitchell Marsh could face ban if Australia manipulate Scotland result to kick England out of T20 World Cup

After beating Namibia in their T20 World Cup group stage game on Wednesday (June 12), Australia seamer Josh Hazlewood said his team could manipulate any margin of win against Scotland to ensure England fails to qualify for the Super Eight. With Australia sealing its Super Eight spot already, they will likely play their benched players in their final group game before pulling up their socks for the next stage. However, if found guilty of doing so, Australia captain Mitchell Marsh could face severe repercussions, including a two-match ban in the Super Eight stage.

Unsure if he was serious about those remarks or if it was a casual loose talk case, Hazlewood said Australia would not like facing England later in the semis (knowing the Poms hold a better record against them in the T20Is), and if they have to manipulate the result against Scotland for that, they will.

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"In this tournament, you potentially come up against England at some stage again," Hazlewood said after Australia's 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,” he continued.

Marsh’s participation under scanner

Going by the norms and notion around fair play cricket, no team attempts to fall for such tactics at this level in this day and age. But if Australia decides to go ahead with it, they will risk their captain’s participation in the Super Eight stage, who will be charged under Article 2.11 of the ICC's code of conduct, facing a possible two-match ban.

Per this code of conduct, the captain will be responsible for ‘the inappropriate manipulation of a net run rate,' resulting inseveral charges under Level Two offence. The concerned captain could face a minimum sanction of a 50% match fee fine, including bagging a maximum of four demerit points and two suspension points, ruling him out of two games straight.

Meanwhile, for Australia to knock England out of the T20 World Cup, who have just one point in two matches played owing to the washout against Scotland in their first group game, they can beat Scotland by a narrow margin, if not go down against them.

"Whether you get close and you just knock it around and drag it out," Hazlewood said of one of many ways Australia could deploy against Scotland.

"There's a few options there, but… to take confidence from winning and winning well, I think that's almost more important than potentially trying to knock someone else out. They [England] have still got a lot to do on their behalf as well, so I think it'll become clearer the closer we get to that sort of stuff,"he added.

(With inputs from agencies)