Adam Zampa walked off with figures of 4 for 21 and a comfortable nine-wicket win over Oman in Hobart, yet the leg-spinner looked anything but satisfied. “It’s feeling pretty hollow, to be honest,” he admitted. “You’d prefer to have the wickets than not, but it’s probably the worst-feeling four-for I’ve ever got.”
Australia were already out of the 2026 T20 World Cup after consecutive defeats to Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka. Friday’s result merely tidied up the points table before the squad files home. “To be sitting here right now, knowing that I’m flying home tomorrow – I didn’t envision this, that’s for sure. So it’s a flat feeling.”
The mood was similarly bleak on Monday evening when captain Mitchell Marsh said his side felt “devastated” and “shattered”. Four days on, Zampa still saw only the broader failure. “We should dominate these games and we did tonight so there’s that.”
High standards, high frustration
Australia’s white-ball pedigree makes the exit sting. Champions in the UAE in 2021, they missed the semi-finals on home soil in 2022 and again in 2024. Zampa placed the current stumble in that wider pattern.
“I guess we’re renowned for being good tournament player[s and] teams, but I think since we won in 2021 we kind of get through the World Cup really disappointed. In 2022 and 2024 – particularly those two teams I think we probably should have given it a nudge and got close to winning it. You never know what happens in the end of these tournaments. The two teams we had in the last two World Cups in particular, I think really disappointing results.
“I think the last three days for me [have been about] reflecting on how the last three World Cups have gone, given what we had achieved in between the World Cups. I think we’ve been number two and number three in the world generally, behind India. We always give India a run for their money when we play them in bilateral series. Sometimes they beat us, sometimes we beat them, so we’re a good team. But then results like this – it’s just hard to fathom.”
Do Australia value T20s enough?
Back-to-back losses to Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka, coupled with a 4-1 Ashes win last summer, prompted talk that Australian cricket still revolves around the Baggy Green. Zampa, a white-ball specialist, rejected that view.
“The time that the coaches and the staff put into how we’re going to play our T20 cricket and who’s going to play each role and what our preparation is – I think they’d probably put as much time into that as they would Test cricket,” he said. “I don’t know, but potentially even more time, because in T20 cricket and one-day cricket, everyone’s a lot tighter in the world, whereas…”
Zampa trailed off, but his point was clear: the margins in limited-overs cricket are slim, and planning alone does not guarantee progress.
Room for reflection, not panic
Assistant coach Saba Karim and all-rounder Ashton Agar echoed the need for calm review rather than sweeping change. Agar called the early exit “a collective off-day that stretched to two games,” adding that Australia “still have the cattle, just not the execution.”
Analytically, the issues were plain. Marsh’s side dropped six catches across the two defeats, the batting went at barely seven an over, and only Zampa offered sustained control with the ball. Those numbers, rather than attitude, undid them.
Yet hope is equally easy to locate. The core of this squad lifted the 2023 ODI World Cup and retains both experience and skill. Australia will tour India for five T20s in October, a series that should offer the first clues about any recalibration.
For Zampa, though, the immediate task is packing his kit bag earlier than expected, his “worst-feeling four-for” a souvenir nobody wants.
