ADELAIDE: In the team's final Group 1 encounter at the Men's T20 World Cup on Friday at Adelaide Oval, Australia skipper Aaron Finch said on Thursday that he has a 70% chance of playing against Afghanistan. Finch was adamant in saying, though, that he won't participate in the game if he experiences any hamstring or nearby area pain.
"Maybe 70/30. The worst-case situation, in my opinion, is that you leave the men out there with one player fewer, so I'll test it out probably this afternoon to make sure I'm not hampering the side in any way before the game "said Finch at the press conference prior to the game.
Finch dispelled that thought when he decided to play in the game on Friday, despite rumours that he would be playing his final T20I match for Australia after retiring from ODIs.
"It won't get any harder as a result. I won't play if I believe it would compromise the team's success by even 1%. I won't play if I'm not comfortable with my hamstring. That can be in the first or the final thing I try to do today. I won't play if I'm in any discomfort or experiencing anything similar." Both Finch and Tim David missed the entirety of the second half of the innings because to hamstring injuries they sustained in Australia's Super 12 game against Ireland. Finch acknowledged that David's scene -- a fitness test determining whether or not to participate in Friday's match --is quite similar to his.
"He is in the same exact situation. He'll work out today, and we'll probably learn more about the chances of both of us playing, one of us playing, neither of us playing, or whatever it looks like, but precisely the same, throughout practise. You don't want a player going down who just in with a niggle to compromise the team's performance. We'll simply go through that as well and make sure everything is checked off this afternoon." Finch admitted that the defending champions hadn't discussed net run rate scenarios because Australia needed to defeat Afghanistan by a wide margin in order to have even a remote chance of moving on to the semifinals. Australia would then need to wait to find out whether they advanced or not after the outcome of England's final game against Sri Lanka on Saturday.
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