T20 World Cup: Pitch to blame for Australia's loss to Zimbabwe? Batter gives verdict

Australia batter Matt Renshaw said the pitch at the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo was not the reason behind their 23-run loss to Zimbabwe in the T20 World Cup, adding that teams from the sub-continent do not complain about conditions when they tour Australia.

Renshaw scored 65 off 44 balls, but Australia were bowled out for 146 while chasing 170 against Zimbabwe.

"I think that's just the nature of cricket. You get a sub-continent team come to Australia and you don't get them complaining about the bounce or the pace," Renshaw said at post-match press conference.




"It's just the way that cricket is nowadays. You've got to be able to go through different surfaces."

He said moving from hard and bouncy tracks in Australia during the Big Bash League to slower surfaces did not create an issue.

"Yes, the wickets in Australia during Big Bash are quite true - they get a lot of bounce. You go to India, and if in the other side of the tournament, there's different wickets, there's probably higher scores, shorter boundaries.

"The boundaries here (Premadasa) are quite big so it's just cricket. But yeah, it's probably just trying to adjust the conditions as well as we can so that when we get to these conditions we know what the game plan is, we know how we get best suited." Renshaw said.

He also credited Zimbabwe’s bowlers for following their plans and making the chase difficult.

"Yeah, probably makes it quite tough to chase 170 out there. They bowled really well at the start, took some early wickets, and felt like every time we built some momentum that partnership with Maxi (Glenn Maxwell) was obviously important but couldn't get enough momentum in there to chase that down and it was just too many to knock."

Renshaw said Marcus Stoinis, who batted at No. 7 after hurting his finger while fielding, might have otherwise come in higher up the order. However, he said that was not an excuse for the defeat and admitted the team fell short on the day.

"Probably Marcus Stoinis was going to bat higher, he got that hit on the finger, we don't know how bad it is, I'm sure the medical staff will treat that, but yeah that was the one today but yeah we just weren't good enough today.

"They played really well, they batted really well, got 170 on the board, had wickets in hand to launch at the end and took early wickets. So it's always tough in a T20 when that happens," Renshaw added.

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