Mumbai: The Indian team, which has won nine consecutive matches in the league stage, is full of confidence but now the previous performance in the knockout stage does not matter and the team has to give w its best performance against New Zealand in the first semi-final of the World Cup on Wednesday today.
The defeat against the same team in the 2019 World Cup in Manchester will still be fresh in the mind of the Indian team. New Zealand also defeated India in the 2021 ICC World Test Championship final. This time the performance of the Indian team has been so tremendous that there is hope that the wait for the title will end this year.
Rohit Sharma’s team knows very well that any mistake at Wankhede Stadium will break the hearts of millions of fans. India won the One Day World Cup after 28 years in 2011 at this Wankhede Stadium. India will have to live up to the huge pressure of expectations. Captain Rohit and coach Rahul Dravid know what happens when they fail to live up to expectations. However, he will have to remove the fear of failure from his players and motivate them to give their best performance. Indian cricket fans will pray that Rohit wins the toss and makes the right decision. Teams chasing the target on this ground have been losing wickets early in the light because the new ball gets tremendous swing.
Kohli would also like to break the streak of getting out early in the semi-finals. He was out for one run in the semi-finals in 2019 and 2015. India will also expect good performances from middle-order batsmen KL Rahul and Shreyas Iyer.
India playing XI: Rohit Sharma (captain), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Lokesh Rahul, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ishan Kishan, Suryakumar Yadav, Prasidh Krishna.
New Zealand playing XI: Tom Latham (captain), Devon Conway, Will Young, Mark Chapman, Daryl Mitchell, James Neesham, Glenn Phillips, Rachin Ravindra, Mitchell Santner, Ish Sodhi, Tim Southee, Trent Boult, Lockie Ferguson and Matt Henry.