Australia win toss and elect to bat in semifinal match

Australian captain, Steve Smith, won the toss and chose to bat first in their Champions Trophy semifinal match against India and Australia at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium on Tuesday.

The contest is a rematch of the World Cup final during which Australia silenced a 100 000-plus crowd at the Narendra Modi Stadium in November 2023 with a resounding six-wicket victory. This time the winner will play either South Africa or New Zealand in Sunday’s final which will again be in Dubai if India are involved or in Lahore if they lose today.

Australia enjoy a huge historical advantage between the teams in ODIs with 84 wins to India’s 57 but it is much closer in ICC events with Australia winning 10 games to India’s seven. In the last five years, however, each team has won seven of the 14 meetings between them.

INDIA: Rohit Sharma (captain), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Axar Patel, KL Rahul (wkt), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Shami, Kuldeep Yadav, Varun Chakravarthy

AUSTRALIA: Cooper Connolly, Travis Head, Steven Smith (captain), Marnus Labuschagne, Josh Inglis (wkt), Alex Carey, Glenn Maxwell, Ben Dwarshuis, Nathan Ellis, Adam Zampa, Tanveer Sangha