“It’s always a difficult decision. You never know whether you’re right or wrong, but I thought Ashton bowled incredibly well today, used his skill, some good arm-balls, found some purchase early and he made it tricky to navigate through those first few overs. We got two [overs] out [of him] in the powerplay which then set up the bowling for that end with him and Zamps operating. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to take those early wickets.”
Despite Agar’s two tight powerplay overs, Afghanistan made a steady start to their innings, scoring 40 for 0 in the first six. It stood in contrast to Australia’s own start, losing Travis Head, David Warner and Marsh himself to be 33 for 3 after six. But Marsh insisted: “I don’t think the game was won or lost in the powerplay tonight.”
McDonald said that there was no point trying to work out what might have happened if Starc had been selected against Afghanistan, and said that conditions in St Vincent had been as Australia expected. They had long earmarked the game as a potential scare given the strength of Afghanistan’s spin attack and the nature of the pitch at the Arnos Vale Ground.
“When you’re hopping around the islands, the conditions change dramatically, and we got what we expected,” McDonald said. “I was comfortable with that decision and now we’ve got to turn our focus to India: a totally different line-up on a totally different surface, and we’ve got to make good decisions at the selection table.
“That’s part of the art of navigating through a World Cup, to get those decisions right – and you can’t play the same game twice. You can’t put Mitchell Starc in there, or Nathan Ellis, and work out what the game would have looked like. We went to Ash and backed him in, and we’ve got full trust in whoever we call on in that 15 to get a job done and we’ve got a task ahead.”
