Australia maintained their winning momentum in the group of death after defeating a high flying Sri Lanka team by 7 wickets in Dubai on Thursday 28 October.
Playing a crucial game in the group of death (Group 1), Australia dominated Sri Lanka in all departments to seal a thumping win that should send a strong message to the opposition teams. The game also found David Warner back to his usual ways after experiencing a horrible patch of form for the majority of the year. Warner scored a stroke-filled 65 off 42 balls after riding his luck in the initial phase of the game. After his inside edge missed the stumps and Kusal Perera dropped a lollipop behind the stumps, it was difficult to stop the left-hander as he batted himself into form.
He especially took a liking to mystery spinner Maheesh Theekshana and scored one boundary from each of his overs. This did not allow Theekshana to get into rhythm and he failed to get wickets against the Australian team.
Warner found good support from his long time partner Aaron Finch, who looked in good touch as well, dominating the SL bowlers throughout his innings. He scored some brisk shots against the SL pacers and scored 37 off 23 balls.
These two put up a brisk 70-run partnership inside 7 overs to make sure that Australia were in a strong position to win the game.
After Warner and Finch’s departure, Steve Smith (28 off 26) and Marcus Stoinis (16 off 7) finished the game with three overs remaining.
Earlier in the innings, the Sri Lankan batting order was choked by a very tight Australian bowling performance despite starting well inside the first six overs.
Despite losing Pathum Nissanka early in the innings, Sri Lanka recovered well, courtesy a rebuilding act from Charith Asalanka and Kusal Perera. While Perera was mostly the submissive one in that partnership, Asalanka came out all guns blazing trying to dictate terms to the Australians.
However, that was short lived as an inspired spell from Adam Zampa and Mitchell Starc put a lid on the damage and picked up four wickets in back to back overs.
Zampa first dismissed Asalanka on a well timed sweep to deep mid-wicket and in the next over, an absolute ripper from Starc uprooted the stumps of Kusal Perera
From there it seemed difficult for Sri Lanka to get back and they were constricted to scoring just 154 runs for the loss of six wickets in a good batting track.
Adam Zampa was given man of the match award for his spell of 4-0-12-2 for his incredible middle overs exploits.
With that win, Australia now are positioned at second place in their group and are among the only two teams that have remained undefeated in the group of death.
Their next assignment comes against England on 30 October in Dubai. This would arguably be their toughest assignment in the tournament and a win could virtually seal them a place in the semi-finals of the tournament.