MITCHELL JOHNSON: Australia didn’t have the luxury of going slow against Scotland in the T20 Cricket World Cup

With Australia already safely through to the Super Eights at the T20 World Cup, the debate over whether they should have minimised the margin – or even lost – to Scotland on Sunday morning in an effort to get rid of a major title rival in England was running rampant over the weekend.

I am intrigued but still a little conflicted over it all. If I put myself back into the bubble as a player I think I would prefer to show dominance in this situation.

That would send a message to the other seven teams who get through to the next stage – regardless of whether England was one of them.

But the Scots made it a mute point by showing they were not wilting violets and posting a strong score of 5-180. Australia recovered form some poor batting to scrape home by five wickets with two balls to spare.

Aussie paceman Josh Hazlewood’s observations on the issue seemed to fuel the fire. If he did it to stir the pot and rile the Poms and their fans up then it certainly worked.

So can not trying your best or even losing a game ever be a legitimate tactic?

It’s the type of dilemma I don’t remember confronting. The net run rate situation with England is something that would have been spoken about by the Aussies but not something that would have come up in a team meeting as a genuine tactic.

It would have been great if England were knocked out. Not because of any threat of them winning the World Cup but purely because it’s England and our history of cricket against them.

But as a former player, I know the Aussies always play to win. I do feel like that’s in the DNA of an Australian, to always fight.

Interestingly though, for all the talk about taking your foot off the pedal being un-Australian, the Aussies did exactly that in the 1999 World Cup on their way to winning the tournament.

Under the rules of that 50-over World Cup, teams got to take points from the group stage through to the Super Sixes from wins against teams who also went through.

So the Aussies had a vested interest in beating the West Indies in their last group game, while also helping their opponents to preserve enough net run rate to get through themselves.

Having rolled the Windies for just 110, Australia then pulled up before reaching the target -- taking 13 overs to get the last 19 runs as the crowd at Old Trafford booed and slow-clapped them.

There haven’t been too many more hard-nosed captains in international cricket than Steve Waugh, so his pragmatic comments after the game were interesting.

“I don’t know about it being moral, but it was in the rules,” Waugh said. “We’re not here to win friends, just the World Cup.”

In the end, the ploy didn’t come off as New Zealand destroyed Scotland the next day to jump the West Indies anyway. Australia took zero points through to the Super Sixes but went unbeaten from that point and won the tournament.

Surely no other sport throws up as many rules versus the spirit debates as cricket. You could draw parallels with the infamous Jonny Bairstow stumping in the last Ashes series. Or even the Mankad.

Alex Carey’s dismissal of Bairstow was within the rules. But you had the whole of England saying it was “not in the spirit of the game”. And at the same time, the whole of Australia saying “it’s out, it’s within the rules”.

As a player out in the middle, all you try to do is follow the rules and play to the rulebook. Professional cricket is a competitive environment, so you push the boundaries and you push the spirit of the game.

It’s very easy for everyone to sit at home and say what they would have done. It’s not so easy when you are the ones out in the middle, under pressure and having not only your skill – but your character - being judged on a daily basis in the media.

The whole debate over whether Australia should have manipulated a result to knock England out could have a very funny postscript if they end up meeting in a semifinal or the final.

And this is what it is really all about in the end – no excuses, bowler versus the batter and the best against the best.

That’s the thing with tournament play, you don’t want to give an inch and when you show teams what you are capable of, it is always seen by all opponents.

When it gets to this stage of a World Cup, this is when the pressure really sets in. And this is where Australia over the years have generally stood up. It’s in the blood. As an Australian playing for your country, you really feel the backing of our nation.

For a cricketer, playing in World Cups is close to the feeling of being an Olympian. You know it’s time to make it count.