"VAN" (Sports Desk - 16.01.2026) :: Australia captain Oliver Peake wants his side to focus on enjoying themselves at the ICC U19 Men’s Cricket World Cup 2026 and ignore the pressure to win.
The defending champions take on Ireland, Japan, and Sri Lanka in Group A and will have high hopes of once again going all the way.
Peake was part of the victorious side two years ago, having been drafted into the squad following an injury, and contributed knocks of 49 and 46 in the semi-final and final respectively.
With that experience under his belt, the 19-year-old wants his team-mates to embrace the occasion in Zimbabwe and Namibia and hopes the fun-factor can help produce their best cricket.
“I’m very excited to captain these boys, it’s a massive honour and something I am really looking forward to,” he said.
“Hopefully I can add some calm into stressful situations and help the boys through that. We have a lot of good players with heaps of skills to showcase and put up a good fight.
“The goal is to have a lot of fun during this tournament, play to win, look out for each other, play for each other and hopefully the results will look after themselves. If not, hopefully we can say we left it all out there and gave it our best shot.
“A lot of the nations look to us as the benchmark a little bit, but there is not pressure from within. It’s more just about having fun, doing whatever we can to win and looking out for each other. Hopefully we can become great mates.”
Australia begin their campaign against Ireland in Windhoek on Friday, before they also take on Japan and Sri Lanka in the Namibian capital.
Peake is looking forward to three tough matches but believes his side have put in the work to ensure they progress.
“We will get a good challenge out of our group opponents. We know it is going to be first class and every team will come with different challenges,” he added.
“Ireland and Japan are a bit unknown, I’ve never played against them before, but hopefully we can come up with plans to beat them. We will have to do our research and hopefully go out there and perform.
“The preparation goes back to last year when we toured in India, that was a really good tour to get exposed to different conditions and face some good spinners. We learned a lot there.
“It would mean everything to win it again. We have a good history of winning World Cups so hopefully we can carry that on and do the country proud.”
While Australia are four-time winners of the competition, Japan are making just their second appearance, having debuted in 2020.
Captain Kazuma Kato-Stafford leads a young squad to Zimbabwe and Namibia who excited to continue the development and growth of cricket in Japan.
“It is an honour to represent my family, friends and country,” he said. “The sport is not huge as yet but it’s growing.
“Being part of this unbelievable journey in a country not known for playing cricket is a huge honour and every time I pull this shirt on, I am filled with so much pride.
“We are a young team but a competitive team. Quite a lot of our guys are eligible for the next World Cup but we don’t like losing, we like to put our best foot forward under any circumstances and fight until the end.
“We are young in comparison to some other teams but we are very motivated to try our hardest.
“It is a very close group, a lot of us have toured together previously and it’s one big circle.
“Everyone gets along really well, after games we all eat dinner together and we have plenty of energetic guys in the team. We are a really close bunch and that is one of our strengths.”
Japan open their campaign against Sri Lanka on Saturday but it is the test against defending champions Australia that has stood out amongst the squad.
“We are really looking forward to the Australia game, that will be an unbelievable experience,” he added.
“It’s not often that associate nations on the scale of Japan face world class nations like Australia.
“A lot of us are really looking at that game as an opportunity and a challenge to face the world’s best players.
“By no means are we underestimating the other teams in our group but it is hard to look past the reigning champions.”
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