Australia play England in the Twenty20 World Championship in Cape Town on Friday (10pm AEST) knowing anything less than a victory will see them crash out of the tournament.

Ricky Ponting's side is expected to be boosted by the return of Michael Clarke after the batsman missed Wednesday's shock loss to minnows Zimbabwe with a lower abdominal strain.

England comfortably beat Zimbabwe by 50 runs in their opening group game on Thursday with Kevin Pietersen starring with 79.

That result means Australia will advance to the Super Eights stage - at the expense of Zimbabwe - if they beat England, with the game scheduled to start at Newlands from 2pm (10pm AEST).

England are expected to go into the game as favourites, but Ponting believes playing the old enemy will bring out the best in his side.

"Hopefully it does, we need something to bring a bit more out of us than we did (against Zimbabwe)," the skipper said.

"We probably can plan for England a bit more as well because it wasn't that long ago that we played a lot of cricket against them in both forms of games.

"But in saying that, they'll certainly have the edge on us in experience as far as Twenty20 cricket goes.

"We're all still pretty new to it. Hopefully we can bounce back."

Australia will be desperate to avoid the fate of the West Indies, who crashed out of the tournament on Thursday after losing to Bangladesh just two days after South Africa chased down more than 200 against them in the opening game of the tournament.

Australia have played England twice before in Twenty20 cricket, with England thrashing Australia in 2005 before Australia returned the favour in Sydney earlier this year.

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