Bridgetown. Thanks to Marcus Stoinis’ aggressive half-century and three wickets, defending champions Australia started their campaign in the T20 World Cup with a 39-run win over Oman on Thursday. Stoinis scored an unbeaten 67 off 36 balls, helping Australia score 164 for five wickets. David Warner also played an innings of 56 runs. After this, Stoinis took three wickets for 19 runs in three overs. Oman’s team could only score 125 runs for nine wickets in 20 overs. For Australia, Nathan Ellis took two wickets for 28 runs and IPL star Mitchell Starc took two wickets for 20 runs.
Starc dismissed Pratik Athawale (0) on the third ball of Oman’s innings. After the on-field umpire gave him not out, Australia took DRS in which the decision was in its favor. Ellis dismissed Kashyap Prajapati (seven) LBW on which Oman took a review but failed. Stoinis dismissed Oman captain Aqib Ilyas (18) on the last ball of the powerplay, whose catch was taken by Matthew Wade behind the wicket. Stoinis sent Zeeshan Maqsood (1) to the pavilion in the eighth over.
Ayan Khan scored 36 runs in 30 balls with the help of two fours and two sixes and shared a 37-run partnership for the seventh wicket. Earlier, sent to bat, Australia scored 164 runs for the loss of five wickets in 20 overs. Travis Head (12) and captain Mitchell Marsh (14) got out cheaply. Veteran all-rounder Glenn Maxwell’s poor form continued as he could not even open his account. Ilyas took a brilliant catch on Mehran’s ball. Stoinis and Warner added 102 runs in 64 balls for the fourth wicket.
Australia’s score was 50 runs for three wickets at one time, after which both of them handled the innings. With his innings of 56 runs, Warner became the batsman to score the most runs (3,120) for Australia in T20 cricket, surpassing former captain Aaron Finch. On the other hand, Steynis hit two fours and six sixes in his 36-ball innings. For Oman, Mehral Khan took two wickets while Bilal Khan and Kalimullah got one wicket each. Ilyas gave only 18 runs in four overs but he could not get a wicket.
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