Australia saves England's T20 World Cup campaign with dramatic victory over Scotland

Australia gave England a huge scare T20 World Cup as they scraped past Scotland in St Lucia to claim victory in the final. With their own progression to the Super Eight stage already guaranteed, Australia were well below their best as they chased down Scotland's 5-180 with two balls to spare.

Travis Head And Marcus Stoinis led the way with the bat for the Aussies, who needed half-centuries each to dig Australia out of a hole in an 80-run stand that turned the match on its head. Tim David and Matthew Wade took the match to the death before a missed catch from Chris Sole in the final over saw Australia register a five-wicket win.

The result means England will join Australia in progressing out of Group B, thanks to a higher net run rate than Scotland. Although on paper Australia were clear favorites against the Scots, for much of the match it looked like the English tournament could be over.

With Pat Cummins rested and Stoinis not bowling, Australia sent Scotland in first but dropped six catches in the field and risked their first ever T20 loss to an associated country. Both Marsh and Travis Head squandered chances in the fourth over, giving George Munsey and Brandon McMullen each an extra life.

With the extra life, Munsey made 35 of 23. While McMullen was devastating with bat in hand. His rapid-fire 60 off 34 provided the platform for Scotland to give Australia a serious score to try and chase.

A late-hitting exhibition from Richie Berrington (42 not out from 31 balls) sent Scotland to the highest score in T20 World Cup history. Maxwell finished with 2-44, while Zampa was the choice of the Australian bowlers with 1-30.

In reply, Australia struggled early on and were only 1-36 after six overs – their slowest powerplay of the competition. At the ten-over mark, Australia needed 107 runs to win and England are said to have considered booking their flights home.

But Head (68 off 49 balls) and Stoinis (59 off 29) managed to get their team back into the match. With 89 needed from 42 balls, Stoinis hit 18 off one over from Safyaan Sharif, including an incredible switch-hit him for six and then backed it up by clearing the rope across the ground on the next ball.

With 60 needed for the final overs, Head hit Sharif for three consecutive sixes before finally being caught on the ground a few balls later. But by then the damage had been done and any notion of Australia deliberately knocking England out of the tournament had been exposed as a myth. David completed the job, eliminating Scotland and taking Australia undefeated into the Super Eights, where they are likely to face India, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

Australia have stopped talks about potentially undermining the Scotland match

Australian cricket fans were licking their lips this week at the prospect of eliminating their bitter rivals by helping Scotland win their final group stage match and the speculation that could unfold grew on Wednesday when Hazlewood said it would be in the Australian competition. “best interests” to do what was necessary to take out the Poms.

But Andrew McDonald's side were confident they wanted to progress to the next stage with a win. “It's the same as any other game, it's a World Cup game. We have a lot of respect for Scotland. It should be a hard-fought game,” Marsh said. “But we play for Australia. We are here to win.”

However, England fans were understandably nervous and after beating Namibia their fan page 'England's Barmy Army', which has more than 470,000 followers, tweeted: “Over to you, cricket Australia” with a wink emoji. The response from England fans to that tweet was quite pessimistic with many believing that Australia would throw the match.

with AAP