T20 World Cup 2024: Australia skipper Marsh could face ban if they try to manipulate result against Scotland

England’s chances of reaching the Super 8 in the T20 World Cup 2024 are directly dependent on Scotland losing to Australia. A victory for Scotland will knock England out who have lost one match so far while their opening game against Scotland was washed out. Scotland have won two matches so far besides earning one point from the washout game.

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Ahead of Australia’s match against Scotland, Aussie skipper Mitchell Marsh has been adviced by former Test skipper Tim Paine to “manipulate” the result,

“Absolutely they should (manipulate the result) and I’m not even joking. I’ve spoken to people about this in the last few days. I’m dead serious,” Paine said on Sen Radio.

Paine, however, confirmed that he doesn’t want Australia to lose but to make it a close match so that Scotland continue to have a net run rate advantage over England.

“I’m not sure what the net run rate looks like, you don’t have to lose the game, I think they can just let Scotland get close enough. Again, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, Scotland could have a day out. But say Scotland batted first and got to 140 and we chased it off 19.5 overs to make sure they don’t suffer a big net run rate loss.

“I think England have to win both of their games by about 50 runs to even get up towards Scotland’s net run rate. So, it’s certainly plausible that you can win the game (but still ensure England don’t progress),” he added.

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Australia pacer Josh Hazlewood had also said something similar after they qualified for Super 8s by beating Namibia.

“In this tournament you potentially come up against England at some stage again. They’re probably one of the top few teams on their day and we’ve had some real struggles against them in T20 cricket, so if we can get them out of the tournament that’s in our best interest as well as probably everyone else,” Hazlewood said.

There’s one problem though if Marsh follows Paine’s advice. He can get banned by the ICC.

Marsh can be banned for two of Australia’s three Super Eight fixtures if he is charged under Article 2.11 of the ICC’s code of conduct which is put in place to prevent manipulation of games.

Article 2.11 of the ICC rule book says: “2.11 is intended to prevent the manipulation of International Matches for inappropriate strategic or tactical reasons (such as when a team deliberately loses a pool Match in an ICC Event in order to affect the standings of other teams in that ICC Event).”

Branching the ICC’s code of conduct could carry a minimum sanction of a 50% match fee fine, with a maximum of four demerit points and two suspension points. This can see Marsh missing two Super Eight matches.