"Blow Out Of Proportion": Mitchell Starc On Josh Hazlewood's "Eliminating England' Remark

After Australia ended their Group B matches in the 2024 Men's T20 World Cup with a five-wicket win over Scotland, fast-bowling spearhead Mitchell Starc insisted that Josh Hazlewood saying about eliminating England was in their best interest was a throwaway line which the media blew out of proportion. "I think a throwaway line has been blown right out of proportion by you lot. You don't stuff around with mother cricket and trying to worry about other results. We're here to win games. It's international cricket.

"England now are on the other side of the draw, so it really doesn't make that much difference for the next three games. So yeah, I think that was blown right out of proportion by you guys," said Starc in the post-match press conference.

He went to say that he was not a huge fan of teams starting from the scratch in Super Eights. "I think there's a big question to be asked about the pre-seeding, I'm not sure I'm a fan of that."

At the Daren Sammy National Cricket Stadium, Marcus Stoinis shined with a match-winning 29-ball 59, followed by Tim David making 24 off 14 balls as Australia chased down 181 in 19.4 overs, despite the required creeping up to 14 at one point.

"We've got phenomenal power in our middle, well right through our order really. But when you've got Stoin and TD and even (Matthew) Wade in the middle there, they haven't had too many things to do the first few games. So, to have a good hit tonight or to get us home with the run rate going up a little bit and maybe being a comparatively a slowish start, it was good to get some time into those guys.

"But Stoin obviously did it for us. He got us going in the first game against Oman, against England, his ball striking in his second half of the innings was