India will face-off Australia in the ICC Champions trophy 2025 semi-final tomorrow. This is the first time India is playing Australia in an ODI after their loss to them in ODI World Cup 2023 final.
India may play it down as another match but you can bet that India would not have forgotten about the loss in World Cup final and would like to settle the score in tomorrow’s match.
On all accounts, India will be the favourites to win this match.
Australia is playing with a depleted side to start with. They are missing as many as 4 of their first choice players due to various reasons. Pat Cummins, Josh Hazelwood, Mitchel Marsh are all nursing injuries where as Mitchel Starc withdrew his name due to personal reasons. And then Cameron Green and Marcus Stoinis, who could have played, are also not available.
Moreover, they will be playing in Dubai for the first time in this tournament where India has a distinct advantage having played all of their matches here. India also have the bowling to exploit the spin friendly nature of pitches. In all possibilities, India will play all 4 spinners that played against New Zealand. It makes perfect sense as well to play all of them as in the semi finals, the two seamers that India had didn’t even bowl half of their quota of overs. Surely India doesn’t need a third seamer.
But you can never count Australia out and especially from an ICC knockout match. They always raise their game when it comes to crunch matches.
Virat Kohli, having suffered a torrid time in the recently concluded Border Gavaskar trophy, would like to make amends. And so will Rohit Sharma.
From Australia, Travis Head would like to add one more dagger to India’s heart as far as ICC knockout matches are concerned. India would be most wary of him and would be working overtime to plan for his early dismissal.
It promises to be a mouth-watering contest, hope it lives up to its billing.
