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ICC CRICKET WORLD CUP

June 25, 2019

Jason Behrendorff

London, England, UK

Australia - 285/7 (50), England - 221 (44.4)

Q. Jason, really long journey the last five years, so many injuries. Did you ever wonder whether you would get the opportunity to have a day like today at a place like this?
JASON BEHRENDORFF: Yeah, that's a very good point. Some days, especially during all the rehab periods, you think, am I going to get back; am I going to be able to get out there and play for my country. It's one of those things you dream of as a kid to play cricket for Australia; and then to come here and play at Lord's my first time here, I trained here the other day and my first game here, so yeah, it was something special.

Q. Following on from that, 5-fer at Lord's against the old enemy, massive game, name up on the honour board. What does that all mean to you?
JASON BEHRENDORFF: I'm not quite sure yet to be honest, but it's something I'll treasure for sure. Again, like it's something that you don't play cricket for the accolades, but to play at Lord's and to take five today was really special.

Q. How much of a vote of confidence was it to, I guess, be given the new ball, considering how well Mitch and Pat have bowled in this tournament?
JASON BEHRENDORFF: Yeah, it was huge. That's where I guess one of my primary strengths lies, bowling up front, swinging with the new ball. So it was great to be given that opportunity to be able select, as well, with the wicket early doors. That was really important, as well, so I was happy with that.

Q. Did you guys note how England had bowled with their new balls and decide to bowl a little bit fuller?
JASON BEHRENDORFF: Yeah, that's something we were assessing as they were bowling. They didn't hit the stumps, or the balls were going to hit the stumps too often, so we made a conscious effort to try to pitch up and we hit the stumps as much as we could early doors.

Yeah, I think we executed that quite well on the whole and which was really positive, and we were able to get off to a excellent start with, I think it was maybe three wickets in the first ten overs, which is always really important.

Q. How big a thing is it for you guys to beat England, gain that confidence? Because you've beaten them twice, and I know one was a warmup game, but they are tournament favourites and you turn them over twice. How big is that for you?
JASON BEHRENDORFF: It's huge. Every game that we can win is massive. Especially in a tournament like this, you always -- they talk a lot about momentum, and that's something that's really important.

So to continue winning, to continue playing good cricket, we're still serve offing to try and play a perfect game, but we're slowly getting better and better each time and today was another really good result for us.

Q. Semifinal place in the bag now, with your record and Australia's record in knockout cricket, are you the team to beat now?
JASON BEHRENDORFF: No, I don't think so. I think it's something that the competition is still very open. England are still a great side. They are probably still favourites, home country. Something that, yeah, we aspire to continue just playing good cricket. So I don't think we're favourites, that's for sure.

Q. We don't see a lot of sides with two left-armers but you'd probably argue there's no reason why you can't. Was it a match-up thing versus England that brought that to be the case today, do you know?
JASON BEHRENDORFF: Yeah, like you said we don't often see it, but yeah, I don't see why we can't. Sometimes you play three right-armers, so why can't we play two lefties.

Yeah, Mitch and I do do different roles throughout the team, so it's really good that we could partner together yeah.

And then, yeah, second part of it, key match-up. That's something we thought was going to work well and I think Mitch and I picked up nine wickets between the two of us, so potentially worked quite well there.

Q. There are a few suggestions England might bowled a bit too short with the new ball from a few people. Did you guys look at how they bowled and I guess change how you wanted to bowl with the new ball accordingly?
JASON BEHRENDORFF: Yeah, we did, so that was a big thing we spoke about is early, we assessed where they bowled. Like I mentioned before, they weren't hitting the stumps too many times. So we made a conscious effort to get the ball out there to try to swing at them and hit the stumps as often as we could.

Q. Does it bother you at all that you are the more unglamorous of the two left-armers, like when you play together?
JASON BEHRENDORFF: What was that? Sorry, I missed it.

Q. You're the more unglamorous of the two left-armers. Maybe the ball that Starc got Stokes with might get spoken about more than the ball you got James Vince with.
JASON BEHRENDORFF: Yeah, exactly. I guess the main thing is Mitch and I are really happy to be able to play on the same team together, and to have two lefties, hopefully we could see more of it. That would be great.

Q. Speaking about bowling with Mitch, do you get tips from him on how to set up batsmen and how is it bowling with him?
JASON BEHRENDORFF: Yeah, so the really positive thing is both Mitch and Pat have played quite a lot of one-day cricket, so to be able to chat to them how they go about it, especially through the middle overs and how we can look to continue to take wickets, and love to grab get a few K's off Mitch. That would be nice. But yeah, those things are really important to be able to work together and to be able to hold those plans and execute those plans out in the middle.

Q. As a batting unit, did you sense that England were a bit vulnerable under pressure?
JASON BEHRENDORFF: Not really. I think whenever you get off to -- I guess as a bowling team, whenever you get off to a good start, you get your foot on the throat, and you don't want to let it off. It's something that we -- I think the best way to determine, like we really want to play aggressive cricket and set the tone up front.

So it was really positive that we were able to do that and continue that throughout the innings.

Q. You're effectively two wins away from winning this competition. Is there belief in the dressing room now that that can happen?
JASON BEHRENDORFF: Yeah, for sure. Again like I mentioned before, momentum is a huge thing in tournament play. So to continue, we've got two big games coming up as well, so ideally another couple of wins there and really head into the semifinals with some great momentum.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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