Without their captain, and down to 12 available players, Australia overcame what could have been an awkward start to their T20 World Cup campaign with an impressive all-round display as they downed Ireland by 67 runs in Colombo in a performance that showed their batting is not all about blasting sixes.

It was a dramatic build-up to the game for Australia – the last team to start the tournament – when it was announced 15 minutes before the toss that captain Mitchell Marsh was unavailable due to a testicular injury caused when he was struck in the groin while batting earlier in the week.

Travis Head,  therefore, captained Australia and because of the decision to give Tim David an extra couple of days in his recovery from a hamstring injury, and no replacement for Josh Hazlewood having yet been named, it did not leave much for the selectors to choose from.

South Africa survived the T20 World Cup’s group of death by outlasting Afghanistan in a match that went into two Super Overs.

They had it won when the last over of regulation time began with Afghanistan needing 13 with one wicket in hand. Kagiso Rabada, though, bowled two no-balls, but a running error allowed them to tie the match. South Africa were then done and dusted but Tristan Stubbs hit a last-ball six to force a second Super Over. This one left Afghanistan needing four sixes off four balls; Rahmanullah Gurbaz, who scored 84 off 42 in regulation time, hit three of them, needed just a four to take it to the third Super Over after Keshav Maharaj bowled a wide, but hit straight to point.

A couple of metres either side, and Afghanistan would have had another shot at beating South Africa in a T20I for the first time. Losing semi-finalists last edition, now they are left needing more than just wins against UAE and Canada to make it out of the first round.

Allowed no soft launch by the draw, having lost the first match against New Zealand, Afghanistan came into this must-win encounter spin-heavy on a pitch with some grip. Quinton de Kock and Ryan Rickelton, though, scored twin half-centuries to give their taller bowlers with canny changes of pace just enough – it seemed – to defend despite an outlier effort by Gurbaz. However, Rabada and Marco Jansen made closing errors against the No. 10 Noor Ahmad. With two needed off the last three balls – first of those a free hit – the last pair took an improbable second to give South Africa a lifeline and the T20 World Cup its first double Super Over.

The skilled left-arm quick Fazalhaq Farooqi who would later make the error to cause the tie, got off to a superb start, swinging the ball each way and taking out Aiden Markram with a slower ball to expose two left-hand batters to offspinners. The shapes Rickelton’s body makes when playing shots can often be similar to de Kock’s, and he has for long been the natural heir. At times, South Africa have found it difficult to accommodate both in the same XI. They will be thankful they had these two here.

It was de Kock – only 6.94 per over against spin so far in his T20 career – who broke the shackles after a start of 12 for 1 in four overs. Whatever de Kock did, though, Rickelton did with more brute force. Left-arm wristspinner Noor, brought in this match as the only change, bore the biggest brunt of it. De Kock welcomed him with a six over long-on first ball, and two balls later Rickelton hit an even bigger one.

The duo even got to their fifties in the same over: the 11th, bowled by Mujeeb Ur Rahman. Rickelton took only 23 balls, de Kock 34, but it was de Kock who had taken on spin early on.

Taken down for 21 runs in his first two overs, captain Rashid Khan started the comeback for Afghanistan with the wickets of Rickelton and de Kock in the same over to reach 699 T20 wickets. The duo added 114 in 10.1 overs to take South Africa to 126 in the 13th over, but now began a new game. Afghanistan offered batters little pace, and only a couple of big blows from Jansen in the end took them to 187. That was just 63 runs off the last 7.3 overs.

Brief scores:
South Africa 187 for 6 in 20 overs (Ryan Rickelton 61, Quinton de Kock 59, Dewald Brevis 23, David Miller 20*, Marco Jansen 16; Fazalhaq Farooki 1-32, Azmatullah Omarzai 3-41, Rashid Khan  2-28) beat Afghanistan 187 in 19.4 overs  (Rahmanullah Gurbaz 84, Ibrahim Zadran 12, Daewish Rasooli 15, Azmatullah Omarzai 22, Rashid Khan 20, Noor Ahmed 15*; Lungi  Ngidi 3-26. Marco Jansen 1-42, Kagiso Rabada 1-38, George Linde 1-39, Keshav Maharaj 1-27) in the Super Over

Afghanistan [Super Over 1] 17/0 [Azmatullah Omarzai 16*, Rahmanullah Gurbaz 01*]
South Africa [Super Over 1] 17/1 [David Miller 01*, Dewald Brewis 06, Tristan Stubbs 10*; Fazalhaq Farooqi 1-17]

South Africa [Super Over 2]  23/0, [Tristan Stubbs 07*, David Miller 16*]
Afghanistan [Super Over 2] 19/2 [Mohammed Nabi 00, Azmatullah Omarzai 00*, Rahmanullah Gurbaz 18; Keshav Maharaj 2-19]

In a tournament that has so far been characterised by plucky challenges from unfancied underdogs, here’s a clash of big beasts to whet the appetite. Okay, so West Indies may not be among the big hitters on a global scale any more – hell, they didn’t even qualify for the ICC’s last two 50-over tournaments. But in a 20-over gunfight, they’ve proven time and again that their particular brand of physical might is right. Not least against Wednesday’s familiar foes at the Wankhede.

A clash of England and West Indies in a T20 World Cup is an inevitable opportunity to revisit one of the greatest finales of all time. Ten years ago in Kolkata, not quite to the month, Carlos Brathwaite launched Ben Stokes into the stratosphere time and time again to swipe the 2016 trophy from England’s grasp, almost as the engraver was getting to work.

But if the raw aggression of that moment left England feeling robbed, they could not say that they hadn’t been warned. For it was at the Wankhede, in their very first match of that same campaign, that they came a cropper in the face of an even more ferocious beating, as the mighty Chris Gayle blitzed 11 massive sixes in his 47-ball hundred.

Fittingly, those were the only two defeats of England’s knowingly naïve campaign. Perhaps they came too early in their ongoing white-ball awakening for the players to possess the street-smarts required to bring down an IPL-trained mean machine. But the lessons they learned would be invaluable, especially when the 2019 World Cup reached its own clutch moments.