United States vice-captain Aaron Jones opened up after his team qualified for the Super 8 of the ongoing T20 World Cup 2024 which is taking place in the USA and West Indies. He said that they could beat any team if they started playing proper cricket. USA created history after becoming the second team after Ireland to qualify for the playoffs in their inaugural season in the marquee event.
USA registered their biggest World Cup victory against the last edition runners-up Pakistan. They defeated Babar Azam & Co. by five runs in a Super Over match. Before Pakistan, they defeated Canada in their opener clash of the tournament.
Definitely looking forward to the challenge (of Super Eight) for sure. Over the last couple of weeks, we've shown that obviously we could definitely compete and beat some of the full member nations," Jones said at the post-match press conference.
"To be honest with you, a lot of people don't really pay much attention to US cricket. Probably the whole world don't already know how much talent we have here and how good the players that we have here are. That could be a little advantage to us, but definitely on any given day, once we play proper cricket, we believe that we can beat any team in the world for sure," he added.
He stated that it's a big thing for the team to qualify for the playoffs. Playing against the full-member nation in the Super 8 will be the challenge for the team.
"It's a big thing for us, to be honest. Over the last couple of years, we've been speaking about playing in the World Cup, playing more games against the full member nations and stuff like that. Here we are doing it right now and obviously qualifying for the Super Eights is really good.
"I think for the boys we want to play as much cricket as possible and we would love to play more cricket against the full member nations. That's where we're going to test ourselves best against the best in the world. So definitely let's see how it goes but we really and truly will love that for sure."
USA will now face South Africa in their Super 8 clash of the marquee event which will take place at Sir Vivian Richards Stadium on June 19.
