Adam Zampa claimed wickets from successive deliveries against Sri Lanka.Credit:Getty
It was a point where he and Stoinis discussed the need to break out of workaday mode and,put simply,“have a crack”. This was tougher for Zampa than most after back spasms that had at times left him struggling to breathe.
“‘Stoin’ was the best,” Zampa toldThe Grade Cricketer podcast. “He came up to me and could see I was in pain,and I think he had a bit of a niggle and he was like ‘mate,let’s just have a crack hey,let’s just have a f---ing go. Who cares if you do your back even worse and I do my hamstring,rip it off the bone,we’re going to go home f---ing losers anyway if we don’t have a crack,so let’s go’.
“That was probably my turning point,I was like,‘yeah let’s just have a crack,let’s go’.
“We just told ourselves to stay in the competition because we knew we were in a compromising position if this game gets away from us,then,3-0 with six games left is not great. So we just stayed in it,and we know with a team like Sri Lanka if you get on top of them,the game can change really easily. So there wasn’t really panic stations or anger,it was just ‘we need to try and stay in the contest’.”
For Stoinis,the commitment to have a go came at some personal cost. He bowled aggressively and effectivelyagainst Pakistan in the subsequent win in Bengaluru,but came out of the game with a calf complaint and has not played since.
Zampa,though,has been pivotal to Australia’s improvement. By the time he had bowled his first three overs against Sri Lanka,Zampa had the combined figures of 1-145 from 21 overs so far in the tournament. But after Cummins claimed the first two Sri Lankan wickets,Zampa has turned things around in sensational fashion:15 wickets at 10.66 from 28 overs since.