Australia VS England T20I: Third T20I washed out, but all eyes are now on T20 World Cup 2022

Before the match started, there were heavy thunderstorms in the city of Canberra, enough to delay the start of the game. 

By the time the conditions cleared out sufficiently to make the game go ahead, Australia had won the toss and unsurprisingly elected to bowl first. 

That is generally a tactic used by teams in T20I cricket. Still, it becomes doubly important in a rain-affected game, as the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern system will make further adjustments to the score in the second innings as and when needed. 

The second rain interruption came after 6.2 overs of the first innings was completed. At that point, England was 47-1, having lost Alex Hales for a second ball duck. 

It was expected to be a passing shower, but it lasted long enough for the match to lose six overs. The game was going to be a 17 overs side affair. 

However, that wasn’t the end of the showers – another drizzle ensured the game stopped yet again, and by the time the teams were ready to resume the match, it was down to 12 overs each. 

England made the most of the shortened game and played the only way they seemed wired to – by going hard at every ball. 

Skipper Jos Buttler brought up another half-century and remained unbeaten on 65 off 41 balls. 

Dawid Malan, who played such a good knock in the previous T20I, struggled to a 19-ball 23 before being dismissed by Pat Cummins after holing out to Mitchell Marsh. 

The late impetus to the innings came from Ben Stokes, who slammed a 10-ball 17 to ensure England finished with a total of 112-2 in their 12 overs. 

The hosts got off to the worst possible start, as they lost two wickets in the space of the first two balls. Chris Woakes got rid of Aaron Finch and Mitchell Marsh off consecutive balls. 

He wound up taking a third in the third over, but by the end of the fourth through, the match was interrupted again by rain, with Australia at 30-3. 

Given that six overs needed to be bowled for DLS to come into play and only 3.5 overs were done by that point, a no result seemed likely – and that was what happened in the end. 

Afterward, both captains had mixed feelings over how the series played out. Buttler was pleased, whereas Finch conceded that England had wholly outplayed them. 

“We had a good series in Pakistan, to come and continue that over here is a good feeling,” Buttler, who was also Man of the Series, said afterward. 

“We would have been happier with a full game, but credit to England; they outplayed us in all three games,” mused Finch. 

This was the last bilateral series to be played before the T20 World Cup, which gets underway with the qualifiers on October 16.