Australia throwing a game is the grim fantasy of conspiracy theorists | Geoff Lemon

The idea any international team would deliberately lose a match is something easily said, and almost impossible to do

For a couple of hours, as the night wore late on the island of Saint Lucia, you could feel it bubbling. In the bars of the Caribbean, spreading through the travelling tourists watching muted televisions. Across the reaches of the internet, slowly because most of the likely candidates were in England asleep, but it was there among the late-night listeners and the expats scattered across time zones. Reflected in the kind of profiles with St George’s Cross emojis in their display names, bristling at the one concern.

Scotland beating Australia would knock England out of the T20 World Cup. Scotland were not supposed to be good enough to beat Australia. But Australia had dropped six catches while Scotland marauded to 92 inside the first nine overs.

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