Australia ready for intense battle vs New Zealand: Pat Cummins on nature of trans-Tasman World Cup rivalry

Australia wants to carry their more aggressive battling and bowling from recent games into the One-Day International Cricket World Cup against old rivals New Zealand in Dharamsala, captain Pat Cummins said on Friday.

Australia, who began the World Cup as one of the favorites, had a slow start, losing to hosts India in their first match, followed by a defeat to an in-form South African side. Australia are fourth in the points table with six points from five games and are looking for its fourth consecutive victory after thrashing the Netherlands in its last game to move closer to a semi-final berth.

“Our group’s big on talking about the style that we want to play, and I think in the first two games not only did we not win, but I think we didn’t really nail the style that we wanted to play,” Cummins told reporters.

“I think in the last few games, you’ve seen us be a bit more aggressive – batting and bowling. Bowling – everyone’s been really open-minded, tried different things; trying bounces, different fields, one over spells, and it’s just been a real buy-in from the whole team, and yeah, it’s been fantastic last few games.

“That’s a standard we want to keep going with for the rest of the tournament.” Third-placed New Zealand’s only loss in the competition so far came against India, having defeated reigning champions England, the Netherlands, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

“We’ve played a lot of cricket with these guys (New Zealand) and some of them are really good mates of some of our players. So, yeah, if anything, it makes you want to beat your mates even more. But yeah, it’ll be intense out there,” Cummins added.

The right-arm fast bowler added that the availability of Travis Head and Marcus Stoinis for the match would be determined after they were assessed later on Friday.