ICC World Cup 2019 | Won’t be surprised if dropped for game against India, says Nathan Coulter-Nile

The Australian top order had slumped in the game against West Indies on Thursday but the Kangaroos had an unlikely hero with the bat in Nathan Coulter-Nile. The pacer ended up as the highest scorer with his 60 ball 92 run innings, the highest score by a number eight batsman and below in a World Cup, which was laced with eights fours and four sixes.

However, the Western Australia pacer has gone wicketless in the two matches he has played so far and reckons that he won’t be surprised if he is dropped for the next game against India at The Oval on June 9.

“No, I took none for 70. I’m not in the team to make runs, hopefully, the top order does that, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I got dropped for the next game,” he said, reported AFP.

Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc have been excellent in the matches so far with off-spinner Nathan Lyon and other pacers Kane Richardson and Jason Behrendorff still waiting to play their first game. Coulter-Nile has stated that he likes the competition.

“I actually like it (competition). I think it’s good to have competition and it wouldn’t be good if we had no one pushing you trying to get better so again I love it,” he expressed.

Coulter-Nile stitched a 102 run partnership for the seventh wicket with Steve Smith and opened up on how the batsman encouraged him.

“He was just trying to keep me level-headed, just giving me the confidence to play my shots, telling me what he thought they were going to do and where the runs were going to come,” he shared.

The right armer fell short of his first ever century in senior cricket by ten runs as he was dismissed in the 48th over. He revealed that he started thinking about his century only then.

“The only time I looked up and I thought ‘Jeez’ was when I was on about 90, I think. Then I started thinking about it,” expressed the 31-year-old.

Coulter-Nile revealed that his bat had split down from the bottom when he hit a pull shot off Sheldon Cottrell but he did not swap his bat.

“I broke my bat one of the shots, I didn’t want to change it, maybe I should have done that. I didn’t think about the century. I just thought ‘jeez that’s a lot of runs’,” he concluded.