On World Cup Final vs India, Josh Hazlewood Makes ‘Pitch Expectation’ Clear

Australian pacer Josh Hazlewood is hoping for a good pitch for the Cricket World Cup final against India at the Narendra Modi Stadium on Sunday. Hazlewood played a vital role in Australia’s three-wicket win over South Africa in the semi-finals. He took the wickets of Quinton de Kock and Rassie van der Dussen to help Australia bowl South Africa out for a sub-par total of 212, with his team chasing the total with 16 balls to spare. Citing the example of Australia’s match against England at the same venue, Hazlewood is confident that the ground in Ahmedabad will have a little bit of everything for everyone.

“I think the beauty of having so much land in one country is that – from north to south, east to west – it’s a bit different. You adapt your bowling, you adapt your batting to those conditions and we saw it tonight. We played England at Ahmedabad and the wicket was good enough not to be a full fair track, so I’m expecting something like that probably,” said Hazlewood Cricket.com.au.

Despite suggesting that India have ticked all the boxes so far in the tournament, Hazlewood emphasized that his side are more than capable of taking advantage of the “cracks” just like they did they when the two teams met earlier in the competition.

“I think they’re really across the board. They’ve got good pace, good spinners, good batsmen so they’re ticking all the boxes. I think we saw a few cracks when we played them in Chennai chasing a small target, we were lucky to get a few early on, but there are no real weaknesses as we saw,” he said.

India and Australia met during the group stage last month, with the hosts winning comfortably. But, the Aussies have made a remarkable turnaround since then, winning 8 games on the trot to qualify for the final.