T20 World Cup 2022: "It was more about the effectiveness of Hazlewood and Cummins at the top"- Daniel Vettori on dropping Mitchell Starc against Afghanistan

Australia decided to drop Mitchell Starc in favor of Kane Richardson in their final Super 12 game against Afghanistan. Several cricketing pundits were baffled by Starc’s exclusion but Australia assistant coach Daniel Vettori justified the call taken by the management.

The former New Zealand left-arm spinner said that it was a “tactical decision” taken by the team management in a do-or-die clash for the hosts.

Australia kept their hopes alive in the T20 World Cup with a hard-fought victory against Afghanistan by four runs but their fate no longer remains in their hands. They will have to depend on Sri Lanka to take them through to the semi-finals.

If England manage to secure a victory against Sri Lanka on Saturday, they will progress to the last four.

Australia needed a massive win to boost their net run rate but that didn’t happen. The exclusion of Mitchell Starc came as a huge surprise to many as the left-arm pacer has the caliber of single-handedly dismantling any batting line-up on his day.

Richardson, who has emerged as a terrific bowler at the death, was preferred ahead of Starc and the decision was defended by Daniel Vettori in a recent chat with cricket.com.au.

"It was more about the effectiveness of Hazlewood and Cummins at the top, and their ability to take the new ball and be wicket-takers. Therefore that pushed Starcy into a different role, and he came up against Kane Richardson," said Daniel Vettori.

"It was thought amongst the hierarchy that Kane was exceptional at the death, and so to utilize him there as opposed to Mitch."

Daniel Vettori continued:

"In his first over, he (Richardson) was incredibly unlucky. He could have had two wickets and then suddenly the whole game's turned, and that first breakthrough (of Rahmanullah Gurbaz) was a big wicket for us because he played so well and had been so aggressive.

"So we reflect on that, and I think Richo himself would say that he probably missed at the back end of two overs. But apart from that, the majority of his spell was what we expected."

Australia were without the services of their regular skipper Aaron Finch, who was nursing a hamstring injury, and the explosive Tim David. While Finch hasn’t been in the greatest of nicks in the tournament, his experience would have certainly come in handy for the home team.

The Afghan bowlers did a commendable job of restricting the Aussies to a score of 168 in their allotted 20 overs. At one stage, Afghanistan were cruising towards the victory target before a three-wicket over from Adam Zampa turned the game towards Australia.

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Daniel Vettori reflects on Australia's narrow 4-run victory

Rashid Khan gave the Aussies a run for their money with a blistering knock of 48* off just 23 deliveries which got the Afghans within touching distance of the victory target.

Daniel Vettori felt that a victory was all that Australia could have gotten given Afghanistan’s versatile bowling attack.

"We knew that the win was potentially all we could get because of the respect for the Afghanistan side. There's huge admiration for that bowling attack, particularly (Fazalhaq) Farooqi at the top and Naveen (ul-Haq) who came in tonight and was exceptional.

"There was no complacency around how hard this game was going to be, so to think of scoring 200 and then bowling them out for 100 to get above the run rate was always going to be a challenge."

Australia started their title defense with a morale-shattering defeat against their Trans-Tasman rival New Zealand by a whopping 89 runs. It dented their net run rate significantly and despite winning three of their next four games, their NRR is still in the negative (-0.173).