Australia’s Cummins keen to carry ‘aggressive’ World Cup approach against New Zealand

Australia want to carry their more aggressive battling and bowling from recent games into the clash with old rivals New Zealand at the One-Day International Cricket World Cup in Dharamsala, captain Pat Cummins said on Friday.

Having started the quadrennial tournament as one of the favourites, record five-time champions Australia suffered a slow start, losing to hosts India in their campaign opener, followed by a defeat against an in-form South African side.

Australia are sitting fourth in the standings with six points from five matches and are chasing their fourth consecutive victory, having thrashed the Netherlands in their last game, to inch closer to a semi-final berth.

“Our group’s big on talking about the style that we want to play, and I think in the first two games not only did we not win, but I think we didn’t really nail the style that we wanted to play,” Cummins told reporters.

“I think in the last few games, you’ve seen us be a bit more aggressive - batting and bowling. “Bowling - everyone’s been really open-minded, tried different things; trying bounces, different fields, one over spells, and it’s just been a real buy-in from the whole team, and yeah, it’s been fantastic last few games.

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“That’s a standard we want to keep going with for the rest of tournament.”

Third-placed New Zealand’s only loss in the competition so far came against India, having defeated reigning champions England, the Netherlands, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. “We’ve played a lot of cricket with these guys (New Zealand) and some of them are really good mates of some of our players,” Cummins said.

“So, yeah, if anything, it makes you want to beat your mates even more. But yeah, it’ll be intense out there.”

The right-arm fast bowler added that Travis Head and Marcus Stoinis’ availability for the match would be determined after assessing the duo later on Friday.