It was a forgettable T20 World Cup campaign for Australia who crashed out from the group stage with two wins against Oman and Ireland. They lost to Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka and failed to make it past the group stage for the first time since 2009.
Australia finished third in Group B with Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe qualifying to the Super Eight stage.
Their performance in this edition of the T20 World Cup was hampered by injuries to key players such as Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood and during the tournament the skipper Mitchell Marsh got injured. However, the fans and former players were blunt in their criticism. The Aussie fans have taken to the social media to vent out their frustration by blaming the players of giving more importance to Test over white-ball cricket.
However, star spinner Adam Zampa was quick to dismiss this theory, saying the team and coach put in more effort while preparing for the shorter versions of the game. Since the last T20 World Cup in 2024, Australia have played eight T20I series, winning five, losing two of them and drawing one series.
“It’s totally false. The time that the coaches and the staff put into how we’re going to play our T20 cricket and who’s going to play each role and our preparation is, I think they’d probably put as much time into that than they would Test cricket. I think, potentially even more. I don’t know, but potentially even more time, because T20 cricket, one-day cricket, everyone’s a lot tighter in the world, whereas Test cricket, Australia and top two or three teams are quite dominant, so I don’t think the work is needed as much, whereas with this format in particular, it’s a lot tighter,” Zampa was quoted as saying.
The legspinner also thinks that the fans back home don’t get to see the team play white-ball cricket more often because most of the series are away from home and being played in a different time zone.
“So the work is definitely there. It’s just – I think the Australian public struggle with the fact that they don’t get to see much of what much white ball cricket play. We play like three to six games in the summer. We do a lot of our work away from Australian time, so they don’t get to see the way that we kind of play and have prepared for these World Cups. And we’ve done some – played a lot of really good cricket up until now so it’s yeah it’s disappointing that it’s ended like this but I think that the work and the time is as much effort as the other formats,” Zampa explained.
Zampa had a mixed campaign in the 2026 T20 World Cup and was not proud of his efforts in Australia’s last group outing against Oman where the legspinner finished with figures of four for 21 in 3.2 overs. Australia won the match by nine wickets but for Zampa it was his worst four-wicket haul.
“Yeah, it feels okay. Like, you come into these games, it’s a bonus to get some wickets and come up with a win, but I reckon I’d probably be feeling exactly the same if I got none for tonight. Yeah, feeling pretty hollow, to be honest. Again, you’d prefer to have the wickets than not, but it’s probably the worst feeling fourth I’ve ever got,” Zampa said.
