ICC Women's World Cup, India vs Australia 2nd Semi-final match preview

India on Thursday will face clinical Australia in the second semifinal of ICC Women’s World Cup 2017 at County Ground in Derby. The tournament favourite Australia have finished the league stage quite comfortably. On the other hand, India have experienced both brilliance and mediocrity during its league stage journey.

The eves of India started the tournament with a bang and upset England in the first match. The winning streak continued till four matches but the team then lost the momentum a little and had to struggle to make it to the semis.

However, the moral of Mithali Raj and company would be high after thrashing New Zealand in their last league match what it was a virtual quarter final.

Captains of both India and Australia-- Mithali Raj and Meg Lanning are in good form with the bat and a handful of other players from both team are putting their best efforts.

Experienced Ellyse Perry is enjoying her dream form and doing the magic with both ball and bat. India have also seen some brilliant innings from Punam Raut, Smriti Mandhana, Deepti Sharma but in Today’s contest, the entire team has put combine efforts to get the better half of experienced Australia.

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"How the players play the situation is important because having said that Derby is our home ground, you need to perform on that day to win," said India skipper Mithali Raj.

"We'll make sure we're really clear what our plans are. On any given day, it's irrelevant where we play, if we play our best cricket hopefully we'll win the match," said Australia captain Nicole Bolton.

Squads:

Probable XI, India: Punam Raut, Smriti Mandhana, Mithali Raj(c), Harmanpreet Kaur, Veda Krishnamurthy, Deepti Sharma, Shikha Pandey, Sushma Verma(w), Jhulan Goswami, Ekta Bisht, Poonam Yadav, Mona Meshram, Mansi Joshi, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Nuzhat Parween

Probable XI, Australia: Beth Mooney, Nicole Bolton, Ellyse Perry, Meg Lanning(c), Elyse Villani, Alex Blackwell, Alyssa Healy(w), Ashleigh Gardner, Jess Jonassen, Megan Schutt, Kristen Beams, Sarah Aley, Rachael Haynes, Belinda Vakarewa, Amanda Wellington

Venue: County Ground, Derby

Time: Thursday, July 20 at 3:00 PM (IST)