In many ways, Australia’s ODI World Cup victory in India last November was defined by Travis Head’s wondrous catch to get Rohit Sharma in the final.

Head is not a natural athlete, but he made tremendous ground in Ahmedabad and held steady to hold the chance and sum up the effort and attention to detail that delivered the trophy.

Less edifying but equally defining was the sight of Mitchell Marsh spilling the simplest of chances from India’s Hardik Pandya in St Lucia overnight, before the Australian captain’s own innings was ended by a blinding take from Axar Patel.

In the two games that have all but decided Australia’s fate in this Twenty20 World Cup, their fielding, bowling and batting errors were far too numerous, allowing Afghanistan and then India the chance to strike defining blows that left Marsh struggling for answers to the many questions posed by the world’s media.

To avoid elimination, Australia need to hope that Afghanistan lose to Bangladesh by a narrow enough margin to keep both teams behind Marsh’s men on run rate. Destiny arrives in St Vincent sometime after 10.30am AEST on Tuesday.

Australia’s first warning signs came against Scotland, where they were “terrible” in the field – according to Mitchell Starc – and got away with it. But instead of building proficiency in subsequent games, the Australians looked more weary with each match; it must be said that they were able to shrug off a testy schedule more easily in India last year.

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