‘I was almost in tears laughing’ - Mitchell Marsh on Gulbadin Naib’s alleged injury bluff

Australia’s T20I skipper Mitchell Marsh has talked about the incident involving Afghanistan’s Gulbadin Naib, where he apparently tried to waste time against Bangladesh by faking an injury. Naib collapsed to the ground, holding his hamstring, following head coach Jonathan Trott’s instruction from the dugout to slow down the game with rain in the sky.

At the point when Naib clutched his hamstring at the first slip, Bangladesh were two runs behind in term of the DLS par score. By the time Naib received treatment, the rain had become much stronger and the game was interrupted. It is worth noting that had the match been called off after that, Afghanistan would have been called the winners by virtue of DLS. However, the match resumed merely minutes later as the passing shower went by, and Afghanistan won by eight runs to make their way into the semi-finals.

Meanwhile, Australia skipper Mitchell Marsh revealed that he was in tears laughing when he saw Naib's injury. Notably, Australia's qualification chances depended on the fixture and the entire team had its eyes fixated on the screen as they awaited their fate. 

"I was almost in tears laughing and at the end of the day it had no bearing on the game. So we can laugh about it now – but gee it was funny. It was outstanding," Marsh told cricket.com.au. "We watched it as a group. It was obviously a pretty amazing game wasn't it? A lot of twists and turns. Obviously you want to keep playing this tournament and that was our only way of doing it. But there's also the element that it was completely out of our control and we only had ourselves to blame for that."

We were desperate to continue on in the tournament: Mitchell Marsh

Marsh revealed how desperate Australia was to progress further into the tournament. The 2024 World Cup marked the second straight time that Australia failed to make it to the knockout stages of the tournament as Afghanistan's win knocked them out.

"We were all flat (when the final wicket fell). We were desperate to continue on in the tournament. But fair play to Afghanistan – they beat us and they beat Bangladesh and they deserve to be in the semi-finals," Marsh said.