Although Australia’s captain Aaron Finch acknowledged that his squad was “weary” and needed to rest up before defending their Twenty20 World Cup crown, England’s captain Jos Buttler stated on Saturday that the home team still had the advantage.

Although Australia’s captain Aaron Finch acknowledged that his squad was “weary” and needed to rest up before defending their Twenty20 World Cup crown, England’s captain Jos Buttler stated on Saturday that the home team still had the advantage. After a lacklustre three-match series against the English, the defending champions enter the marquee cricket tournament on home soil, which begins Sunday with the preliminary round. In the end, Australia played eight matches in 26 days, three of them in India, and lost all of them by a score of 2-0. The third game was postponed owing to rain on Friday evening.

“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 claimed that Australia was still the team to beat since his squad is experiencing success with a spike in confidence.

“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 Melbourne. “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.” Prior to their entry into the World Cup at the Super 12 stage on October 22 in a rematch of last year’s final with New Zealand, Australia still has an unofficial warm-up game against India scheduled.

In the weeks leading up to the match, Finch claimed the players would receive a few days off “when there is absolutely no cricket at all to enable our boys rest.” Additionally, he admitted that England “clearly outplayed us.” “With the bat, we were always just one wicket down further than we needed to be over the whole series,” he said. “In big run chases, you need that one in batter towards the back of the innings and we probably were just falling a little bit short each time with that. All in all, we’re not bad, just a little sharpen up would be nice.”

Finch expressed his confidence that his team would be prepared for their difficult debut despite the series loss and the demanding build-up to the World Cup. “We can’t control what’s already gone,” he said. “We know how hard the guys train. Each person trained really well individually, and as a group, we trained fantastic. “It’s just about guys peaking at the right time and not burning out too early.”