Where do you start with this collective failure from Australia?
The ire of the fans at home is strong despite the fact that most are consuming this tournament via the scorecards, match reports and bite-sized highlights given the loss to Sri Lanka began at 12.30am AEDT and finished at 3.52am on Tuesday morning.
The finger will be squarely pointed at Australia's selectors for asking Steven Smith and Matt Renshaw to run the drinks rather than replace some of the incumbents who have been given long ropes despite long run-scoring droughts.
But the reality of this car crash runs far deeper than those two omissions, and there isn't a solitary set of fingerprints on the wheel for the public to find a singular scapegoat.
Australia were 104 for 0 after 8.3 overs against Sri Lanka with Mitchell Marsh and Travis Head playing exactly the way the team had planned to for this tournament, a method that had yielded ten wins in 11 completed games at one stage during 2025 against West Indies, South Africa, New Zealand and India.
Even after a collapse of 4 for 26 in 4.1 overs, Josh Inglis and Glenn Maxwell got Australia to 160 for 4 with four overs left with the theoretical hitting power of Marcus Stoinis and Cooper Connolly still available.
But they lost 6 for 21 in 24 balls to be bowled out for 181.
When Sri Lanka lost their second wicket in the chase, they needed 77 off 46 to win. Then Pathum Nissanka and Pavan Rathnayake scored 80 off 34 to win with eight wickets and two overs to spare.
Just as Australia did in the loss to Zimbabwe, the bowling group only took two wickets for the innings. Of the four wickets taken across the two losses, Stoinis has three and Cameron Green one. Australia's two best bowlers - Nathan Ellis and Adam Zampa - went wicketless in back-to-back T20Is for the first time in two-and-a-half years, while the injured Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins were possibly fast asleep in Sydney.
Australia's tournament is technically not over yet. But barring Ireland and Sri Lanka beating Zimbabwe and a sufficient net run-rate-boosting win against Oman, Australia will be out of a third straight T20 World Cup before the semi-final phase and will miss the Super Eights for the first time since 2009.
So where did it all go wrong?
The seeds of this failure were sown back in November. Australia's T20I team was flying at that point. They had built a power-based batting group alongside a balanced first-choice attack that was working in SENA conditions. There were always questions on whether the method could stand up in Sri Lanka and India. They won't get the chance to answer that question in India, because they appear to have failed to get past the first hurdle in Sri Lanka.
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But while they were beaten by the Sri Lanka spin test they knew was coming in Pallekele, that was not what beat them in Colombo against Zimbabwe. What beat them there was a lack of wicket-taking firepower, and a top-order failure against the pace, bounce and seam movement of Blessing Muzarabani and Brad Evans.
Hazlewood's hamstring injury on November 12 might have been the moment Australia's campaign was doomed. Up until that point, he had taken eight powerplay wickets in seven T20Is in 2025 at an average of 15.12 and an economy rate of 6.72. In his last T20I before that injury he took 3 for 13 against T20 World Cup favourites India at the MCG, knocking over Shubman Gill, Suryakumar Yadav and Tilak Varma in a spell that Abhishek Sharma described as something "I haven't seen" in T20s.
Since then, when Hazlewood was rested for the remainder of the five-game series to prepare for an Ashes series he would eventually not be fit enough to bowl a ball in, Australia have lost seven of eight T20Is with their lone win coming against Ireland.
From the start of 2025, Ellis has eight powerplay wickets at 15.5 with an economy rate of 8.26 but three of those came in the win over Ireland. Ben Dwarshuis has eight powerplay wickets at 26.57, at an economy rate of 8.08, but he was left out of the Sri Lanka game after failing to take a wicket against Zimbabwe. Xavier Bartlett, who has been selected as a new-ball specialist, and Stoinis have three and one wickets apiece in the last 11 T20Is in the powerplay with both averaging over 50 and conceding more than nine runs an over. Sean Abbott, who was in Sri Lanka as a travelling reserve for the World Cup but was overlooked to replace Hazlewood for a spare non-bowling opening batter in Smith, has 1 for 102 at an economy rate of 10.2 in his last seven T20Is.
The underbelly of Australia's white-ball pace bowling depth has been exposed. There was a thought the Ashes would expose the Test depth beyond the big three. But the truth is, Australia's powerplay bowling has long been a problem. It is the reason for their three losses at the previous two T20 World Cups with New Zealand's Devon Conway and Finn Allen in 2022, Afghanistan's Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Ibrahim Zadran and India's Rohit Sharma destroying the big three in the 2024 editions, to the point where Mitchell Starc was dropped in both tournaments.
Hazlewood's injury highlights a problem beyond the development of Australia's white-ball bowlers more broadly. The injury toll amongst Australian fast bowlers is at alarming levels, with stress fractures and hamstrings the major injury problems. Hazlewood's hamstring was not supposed to be major and yet it has combined with some Achilles issues to keep him out for three months and counting.
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That Smith was called in to replace him at the final hour speaks to Australia's other major issue at the moment, which is the form and fitness of the T20I batters. The selectors decision to play the first two matches of the tournament with only 12 and 13 fit players to choose from when they had the option of adding Smith earlier was a gamble that has backfired.
That Smith ultimately didn't play against Sri Lanka, and that Renshaw was dropped after being their best batter in the first two games, is a decision the selectors will need to own. They backed Plan A with their power-hitters on blind faith, ignoring the glaring form issues coming into the tournament.
Head's otherworldly deeds in the Ashes hid his T20I woes in plain sight. His half-century against Sri Lanka was his first score above 31 in 13 T20I innings, having averaged 12.83 and struck at 125 for the previous 12.
Inglis, Green and Maxwell have played a combined 37 innings across all formats since the start of the Ashes and have zero half-centuries between them and only one 40-plus score in that time. All three have misfired in this tournament with the bat.
Green was not trusted with the ball against Sri Lanka and Maxwell has not bowled more than two overs in his last six T20Is and has not taken a wicket in that time.
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Tim David's move to No. 4 had been the centrepiece to Australia's batting plan for the World Cup after he was under-utilised in 2022 and 2024. His second hamstring injury in nine months on Boxing Day, a question in itself for a power-hitter who doesn't run much, meant he did not play until the Zimbabwe game, and he looked as underprepared as his scores suggested.
Connolly has averaged 6.75 in his last 15 T20 innings since Christmas and has fallen to spin eight times in that period. Yet he was preferred at No. 8 against Sri Lanka after being dropped for the Zimbabwe game to bolster the batting ahead of a second specialist Matt Kuhnemann, on a surface where Sri Lanka bowled 14 overs of spin to Australia's nine.
The failings are innumerable, from performance of individuals to selection, to planning and preparation. The decision to prioritise the BBL finals over asking the entire group to play the full warm-up series in spinning conditions in Pakistan also looks foolish in hindsight.
That also highlights a broader worry for Australian cricket. T20 cricket has not been a priority. The privatisation of the BBL might make it one soon. But that won't necessarily help the T20I team perform better as a unit in World Cups, nor will it aid Australia's ability to sustain Test success beyond its aging incumbents.
Australia's likely failure to get out of the group stage won't spark a full-blown crisis or an Argus-style review. But the rest of the world, barring potentially England, are prioritising this event when Australia are not. Why that is and whether it should be, with another home T20 World Cup coming in 2028, is a question that needs answering.