Darwin, Aug 11 (IANS) After striking a blistering 83 in Australia’s 17-run win over South Africa in the T20I series opener, big-hitting batter Tim David said the side’s rapid-fire starts in the shortest format is close to their new-found approach of going all guns blazing in lead-up to next year’s T20 World Cup.

In the game at Marrara Stadium, Australia smacked 71 runs in the Powerplay, though they lost four wickets. “It’s obviously not the team plan to be four down within six overs, but that happens at times. We’ve got what we believe is a great calibre of batters in our batting order, and we back each guy to make the right decisions.

“We’ve been playing together as a group now for a while, so there’s not a great deal of instruction from the coaches. They trust the players. We trust ourselves to go out there and we understand the game situation and we make decisions on the fly, because that’s the nature of T20 cricket.

“I think if you’d watched our guys bat over the last period, wherever they bat around the world and when they play for the Australian team, it’s close to all guns blazing. So, yeah, you can probably expect to see that a little bit from our team. That’s how we think we play best,” David was quoted as saying by ESPNCricinfo on Monday.

Australia lead the three-match series 1-0, with the second T20I scheduled for Tuesday in Darwin. David’s 83 off 52 balls has now taken his tally to 215 runs in his past three T20I knocks, a sequence that includes a 37-ball century against the West Indies in St Kitts a fortnight ago.

“That’s not part of the plan for me. To be honest, the things I’ve been I’ve been building towards is the T20 World Cup next year and the major tournaments that are leading up to that. Honestly, I don’t operate much further than the next day ahead. But it’s a nice problem to have, because if I wasn’t scoring any runs, then you wouldn’t be asking that question,” added David.

–IANS

nr/