AUS Vs AFG: Australia and Afghanistan are one night shy off their crucial ICC Champions Trophy 2025 fixture at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore, as both sides are ready to contest in a virtual knockout.
Australia, who have 3 points to their name, face an Afghanistan side, who are coming off a historical win vs England, thereby, knocking the 2019 ODI World Cup winners out of the competition.
Australian batter Marnus Labuschagne has reflected on the threat that can be possessed by Afghanistan, stating that the side have the ‘skill-set’ to compete against the reigning ODI World champions.
“If we’re batting, we’ll be looking to combat their spin through the middle, which has been their really strong point. Their pace bowling has been very good in the last few games, Noor Ahmed started really well, they finished off the game really well last night. Going into their batting, we saw that they’ve got batters last time we played Afghanistan as well, their top order, they got 300 [actually 291] and Maxwell played that amazing innings and got us over the line,” said Marnus Labuschagne.
“We know how good they are, we know the skill level that they play with. But we’re going to make sure we come really well prepared and put a really good performance together. Most of our preparation came before the tournament. We’ve had a training rain-out and then the game rain-out against South Africa, and our training now is indoors. The boys have played a lot, we’re ready to go. When you come to these tournaments you have to be prepared to play,” said the Australian batter.
“It feels like we’re at the clinch part of the tournament and we’ve only played one game. Josh Inglis played amazingly with Alex Carey through that middle period. There were different parts of the game where different people stood up, I thought Matt Short played beautifully at the start. There were different partnerships that really made that game,” said the 30-year-old.
“Going into tomorrow’s game, we’ve all got to be ready to perform, it doesn’t matter if you’re young or you’re a senior player, we’ve got to find a way to put a good score on the board, or if we’re chasing the total, make sure we win the game,” he added.
