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Top Story: Warner, Marsh hundreds set up vital win over Pakistan

Australia may have drawn level with Pakistan today, but really, they were one step ahead all evening. A game that briefly threatened to break into a thriller ultimately had Australia clinching a routine win, the havoc unleashed by centuries from David Warner and Mitchell Marsh too much for Pakistan to overcome in the end. Pakistan fought back to contain – to the extent that word can be used for a team that posts 367 – Pat Cummins’ side, and gave the chase a good go.

But despite a 134-run opening stand between Imam-ul-Haq and Abdullah Shafique, Australia began to chip away with regular wickets, with Adam Zampa taking four for the second consecutive game. Iftikhar Ahmed and Mohammad Rizwan looked to take the game deep, but eventually Pakistan would lose six wickets for 36 runs as Australia won by 62.

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Match analysis: Warner still the GOAT-to option for Australia at World Cups

Last year, Virat Kohli hit a six off Haris Rauf that everyone raves about all the time. On Friday afternoon at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, David Warner hit Rauf for a six that was just as astonishing. Take away the context of Kohli’s six, and maybe, just maybe…

But why compare at all?

Here’s how the Warner six unfolded – and that word is chosen with some deliberation, because the shot was a miracle of folding and unfolding. Rauf, angling the ball in from round the wicket, went full and at the stumps at 146.1kph. It was the kind of ball that’s difficult to get underneath and hit in the air in any direction. Warner didn’t just hit it in the air, but made it clang into the roof of the stand at backward square leg.

Read the full analysis from Karthik Krishnaswamy in Bengaluru

Must Watch: Shane Bond on Mitchell Marsh

News headlines

Hardik Pandya has been ruled out of India’s next World Cup game, against New Zealand in Dharamsala on Sunday, after hurting his left ankle against Bangladesh.

Bangladesh’s acting captain Najmul Hossain Shanto has bemoaned their inability to turn starts into major innings as they campaign hangs in the balance after three defeats.

Match previews

When these two sides met a little over three months ago, the picture could not have been more dissimilar. Sri Lanka had just racked up a clean sweep of the World Cup Qualifier and dispatched the Dutch twice over the course of the tournament. While the first was an edgy affair, the second – a final, though with nothing really riding on it – was as one-sided as most Sri Lanka-Netherlands games have tended to be.

In all, these sides have squared off five times in ODIs with Sri Lanka winning all those encounters, including one where the Lankans racked up the then-highest ever ODI total of 443. But despite this lopsided history, it’s the Dutch that come into this game with all the momentum.

Netherlands (probable) 1 Vikramjit Singh, 2 Max O’Dowd, 3 Colin Ackermann, 4 Bas de Leede, 5 Teja Nidamanuru, 6 Scott Edwards (capt & wk), 7 Sybrand Engelbrecht, 8 Roelof van der Merwe, 9 Logan van Beek, 10 Aryan Dutt, 11 Paul van Meekeren

Sri Lanka (probable) 1 Pathum Nissanka, 2 Kusal Perera/Dimuth Karunaratne, 3 Kusal Mendis (capt & wk), 4 Sadeera Samarawickrama, 5 Charith Asalanka, 6 Dhananjaya de Silva, 7 Dunith Wellalage, 8 Chamika Karunaratne, 9 Maheesh Theekshana, 10 Lahiru Kumara, 11 Dilshan Madushanka

Will it be England, the reigning world champions across 50- and 20-overs, whose quest for a third global title in four years is in danger of dissolving in a bisque of self-doubt? Instead of cementing a legacy to rival the great Australian team of the turn of the millennium, their humiliating losses to New Zealand and Afghanistan are threatening to cast England’s narrative back into their World Cup dark ages of the 1990s and 2000s, to make that 2015-19 resurgence seem more like a mirage than a miracle.

Or will it be South Africa… the calmest, most serene force in the competition for two heady performances, as a team seemingly without baggage cruised past Australia and Sri Lanka with scarcely a backwards glance, to give the impression that this… finally… could be their year. And then, out of a clear Himalayan sky, came that defeat in Dharamsala, and all bets were off

Full preview

England 1 Jonny Bairstow, 2 Dawid Malan, 3 Joe Root, 4 Ben Stokes, 5 Jos Buttler (capt/wk), 6 Harry Brook, 7 Chris Woakes/Gus Atkinson, 8 David Willey, 9 Adil Rashid, 10 Mark Wood, 11 Reece Topley

South Africa (probable) 1 Quinton de Kock (wk), 2 Temba Bavuma (capt), 3 Rassie van der Dussen, 4 Aiden Markram, 5 David Miller, 6 Heinrich Klaasen, 7 Marco Jansen, 8 Kagiso Rabada, 9 Keshav Maharaj, 10 Lungi Ngidi, 11 Tabraiz Shamsi/Gerald Coetzee

Feature: South Africa unites for double World Cup clash with England

There are Super Saturdays and then there are Super Saffadays and this is one of the latter.

South Africa and England (hence Saffa: the casual expression for someone from South Africa – which is also where a lot of English professional sportspeople come from) have only played each other in international cricket and rugby once before on the same day and that was 25 years ago. In 1998, South Africa and England were tussling on day three of the Manchester Test, which was eventually drawn, and the Springboks beat England 18-0 in Cape Town. This time, they’re both on neutral ground playing at World Cups, an unprecedented occasion, which means there’s at least 10 hours of entertainment and rivalry guaranteed.

Read the full feature from Firdose Moonda