MELBOURNE: Australian captain Aaron Finch admitted his team was “tired” and needed to freshen up before their defence of the Twenty20 World Cup title, but England skipper Jos Buttler on Saturday said the hosts remain the favourites.

The reigning champions head into the showpiece cricket tournament on home soil, which starts on Sunday with the preliminary round after a lacklustre three-match series against the English.

They lost 2-0, with the third game abandoned Friday evening due to rain, culminating eight matches for Australia in 26 days — three of them in India.

“I think the guys are probably a little bit tired at the moment,” Finch said after the washed-out England match, where he fell for a first-ball duck.

“The schedule has been so packed over the last six to eight weeks that we identified a couple of months ago that we wanted to make sure that we’re in a position to be peaking at the right time of the World Cup and not beforehand.

“So it’s going to be important over the next couple of days to try and freshen everyone up as much as we can.”

Buttler, whose team are riding high after a confidence-boosting build-up, insisted Australia were still the team to beat.

“T20 is one of those games that can be unpredictable, but I think history tells you that, generally, the host nation are slight favourites in big tournaments,” he said in a pre-tournament media conference in Melbourne on Saturday.

“Many of us have travelled and played in Australia and know the conditions, but of course no-one is going to know the conditions or be as accustomed to them as the Australian team.

“They are also reigning champions, so you have to pick them out probably as favourites for the tournaments.”

England, who begin their bid for a second 20-overs World Cup title with a match against Afghanistan in Perth on Oct 22, topped the Super12 group stage in last year’s tournament, ahead of Australia, but were knocked out by New Zealand in the semi-finals.

Buttler said the format was unpredictable and the competition fierce.

“In T20 cricket, one person can take the game away from you,” said Buttler, a proven match-winner himself. “We’ve had good preparation. We look forward to this tournament and don’t try and read too much into past tournaments or things.

“We try and learn and get better and improve every day, and look forward to starting this competition in the next week.”

Australia still have an unofficial warm-up game scheduled against India before they enter the World Cup at the Super 12 stage on Oct 22 in a rematch of last year’s final with New Zealand.

Finch said the players would be given a couple of off days in the lead-up “where there’s no cricket at all to let our guys recharge”.

He also acknowledged that England “definitely outplayed us”.

“It would have been nice to win against England but it’s not the be all and end all,” Finch, the first Australia batsman to play 100 Twenty20 Internationals, said during the pre-tournament captains’ news conference.

“I think it’s about trying to make sure we have as many bases covered as possible in a tournament [where] the format is really brutal. I feel everyone is in a really good spot.

“There’s a real calmness in our group and also a confidence that we know our best is good enough on the day.”

Cricket’s shortest format has little margin for error and an element of luck could prove crucial, said the batsman.

“In terms of the overall picture, you need a bit of luck in a T20 World Cup as well — the format lends itself to one individual performance knocking teams out or changing the course of a tournament.

“So you have to accept that and you hope that you’re on the right side of it. I feel we’ve got enough match-winners to our side that we can put enough pressure on opposition.”

Published in Dawn, October 16th, 2022