Australia did a favour to their Ashes rivals England by propelling them into the Super Eight stage of the ongoing ICC Men's T20 World Cup as they defeated Scotland by five wickets in the 35th match of the tournament. Earlier in the day, England had outclassed Namibia by 41 runs (DLS) to keep their Super Eight hopes alive and needed Australia to register a win over Scotland.
Travis Head and Marcus Stoinis were the chief architects of Australia's win. Head played a spectacular knock of 68 off 49 balls with the help of five fours and four sixes after he was given a reprieve early on in his innings. Head has miscued a lofted shot on the third delivery of the fifth over off Chris Sole but Michael Jones failed to cling on to the opportunity.
The southpaw didn't look back from there and made the Scottish bowling attack pay heavily. Head struggled to middle the ball in the initial phase of his knock and that's when Marcus Stoinis came to his and Australia's rescue.
Stoinis launched an unrelenting attack on Scotland and took the pressure off Head. He hammered 59 runs off 29 balls before perishing to an attempted reverse lap against Mark Watt on the last delivery of the 17th over.
However, the game was already over by then as Tim David and Matthew Wade fulfilled the formalities in the last over of the game, helping Australia chase 181 down in 19.4 overs.
Scotland did have a memorable time with the bat in hand. Brandon McMullen proved unstoppable for Australia as he played a fluent knock of 60 off just 34 balls. He smashed a 26-ball fifty and hammered six sixes and two boundaries during the course of his knock.
George Munsey (35 off 23 deliveries), Richie Berrington (42* off 31 balls) and wicketkeeper-batter Matthew Cross (18 off 11 deliveries) also made useful contributions that enabled Scotland to post 180 on the board.
