Ecstasy for Afghanistan and agony for Australia as they have been knocked out of the ongoing 2024 edition of the ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2024. After having registered a spectacular 8-run victory over Bangladesh in a nail-biting thriller, Afghanistan have managed to qualify for the semi-finals and they will now be facing South Africa in the opening knockout match scheduled to take place on 27 June, 2024 at the Brian Lara Stadium in Tarouba, Trinidad. However, it is definitely a tough pill to swallow for the Australia cricket team as they were aiming to complete a trio of ICC trophies after having won both 2023 ODI World Cup and World Test Championship (WTC). In this article piece, we will analyse about what went wrong for Australia in this T20 World Cup 2024. 

What went wrong for Australia in the T20 World Cup 2024?

Australia had a wonderful start to their campaign in the 2024 ICC Men's T20 World Cup with an impressive 39-run victory over Oman during their opening fixture hosted at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Barbados. The 2021 T20 World Cup champions then got the better of their Ashes rivals England by a margin of 36 runs on the back of an excellent performance. During their last two matches in the opening round of this ongoing T20I mega event, Australia defeated Scotland and Nambia to come out unbeaten and successfully qualify for the Super 8 stage. 

The Mitchell Marsh-led Australian team were surely touted as one of the major contenders to lift the T20 World Cup 2024 title as they had a very balanced squad consisting of some quality all-rounders. The ODI World Cup defending champions then registered another superb 28-run win against Bangladesh. Australia's winning streak in the ongoing competition came to an end after they suffered a poor 21-run defeat at the hands of Afghanistan in their second first Super 8 clash. While chasing a mere total of 148 runs, Australia were bowled out for as many as 127 runs. It was once again Glenn Maxwell who stood out in another run-chase against Afghanistan as he scored 59 runs off 41 balls but he failed to take his team over the finishing line. 

Australia were then supposed to face a strong Indian team in their last game of the Super 8 stage at the Daren Sammy National Cricket Stadium. After being asked to bat first, the Men in Blue posted a massive score of 205 for 5 in their quota of 20 overs on the back of skipper Rohit Sharma's remarkable knock of 92 runs off just 41 balls that included 8 sixes and 7 fours. There were some useful contributions from the trio of Suryakumar Yadav, Shivam Dube and Hardik Pandya. In the second innings, Travis Head was once again smashing the Indian bowlers all around the park having notched up another blistering knock of 76 runs off only 43 deliveries. However, Indian bowlers held their nerves really well and took wickets regularly at the other end while Jasprit Bumrah showed his class by picking the prized scalp of Head in the 17th over to seal the game. Eventually, Australia were restricted to 181 for 7 as Arshdeep Singh took three wickets while Kuldeep picked two scalps.

After two disappointing back-to-back losses against Afghanistan and India, Australia relied heavily upon Bangladesh to win the final Super 8 clash in this 2024 ICC T20 World Cup. However, Bangladesh were also knocked out by Afghanistan as they reached their first-ever semi-finals of an ICC event. One of the major reasons for Australia's suddent exit from this T20I tournament was their lacklustre batting performance. Majority of the Australian batters failed to deliver consistent performances as the opening duo of Travis Head and David Warner did score fifties in this competition, but they were quite dependent on individual performances. 

Australian captain Mitchell Marsh had a really disappointing tournament with the bat as he failed to notch up even a single half-century. On the other hand, Australia's pace trio of Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins bowled really well throughout this edition of the mega event. Australia's premier leg-spinner Adam Zampa also picked up wickets on regular basis.