SYDNEY — Sparks can be expected to fly when confident, well-balanced teams from cricketing superpowers Australia and India clash in a mouthwatering World Cup semifinal at the Sydney Cricket Ground Thursday. The match pits four-time champion Australia, the top-ranked team in one-day cricket, against title holder India, the dominant financial power in world cricket. The winners will go on to face the other co-host New Zealand next Sunday in another of the great arenas of the game, Melbourne Cricket Ground. While Thursday's clash will have to go some way to match the tense climax of New Zealand's victory over South Africa Tuesday, Australia's meetings with India are rarely dull. If familiarity between the two sides has not quite bred contempt, the frequent heated exchanges in their clashes indicates at the very least a fierce competitiveness. “The fact we're playing India now is extremely special,” Australia captain Michael Clarke said Wednesday. “I think you'll see two teams at the top of their game wanting to play their best cricket, I'm really confident both teams will put on a great show.” In the Test arena at least, home advantage has been the decisive factor in their meetings in recent years. It has less of an impact in the one-day game and there is good reason for India to have some confidence it will not mitigate too heavily against them Thursday. Clarke admitted it was a “no brainer” that Indian fans would outnumber those of Australia, while the SCG has always offered something for the one area of the game where the visitors can be said to have a distinct edge, spin bowling. Australia can look to its record of having lost just one of 14 ODIs at the ground against India and to its utter dominance of their meetings since the tourist arrived Down Under last November. India has been transformed since the start of the World Cup, however, with a newly potent bowling attack firing alongside its always fine batting to take it to the last four unbeaten. That has given the side such confidence that batsman Rohit Sharma said it was irrelevant whether there was spin on offer at the SCG or not. “If you look at the tournament, we've taken 70 wickets in seven games, distributed between the spinners and the fast bowlers,” he said. “So it doesn't matter how the wicket behaves. If it suits the fast bowlers or the spinners, we've got everything covered in those two areas. “We just need to keep doing what we've been doing. We've played some really good cricket in the World Cup and it's just a matter of two more hurdles.” Australia, by contrast, would clearly welcome a wicket to favor its quick bowlers Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Johnson and Josh Hazlewood. Hazlewood, who took 4-35 in the quarterfinal victory over Pakistan, looks likely to get the nod ahead of spinner Xavier Doherty to keep Australia unchanged for the first time in the tournament. India has only altered its line-up during its title defense because of an injury to paceman Mohammed Shami and is also likely to be unchanged. “We've played a lot of cricket against India,” Clarke added. “We know their strengths, we know their weaknesses, and we know they're a very good team. “We have to execute our skills as well as we possibly can, and if we do that, I have confidence that we can beat any team we play against.” India will hope the law of averages does not catch up with it. India has beaten Australia just once in 35 years in a ODI at the SCG when a Sachin Tendulkar century helped it win the first of the three-match tri-series final in 2008. Sharma was playing the 13th of his 134 ODI matches on that day and batting at No. 5 he scored 66 in a match-turning 123-run partnership with Tendulkar. Dhoni also featured in that game. “It's been a long time, seven years. I can recall that very well,” he said. “It's really fresh in my memory because ... the great Sachin was batting alongside me, so there is no way I can forget that. It was a very important game.” India now confronts a side that has won seven of its 10 World Cup meetings against it, although Dhoni's men secured a five-wicket win in the quarterfinal at home in Ahmedabad four years ago. Four-time champion Australia has won all six semifinals it has appeared in since the inaugural event in 1975, but India will consider the SCG as the best venue to halt that record. Groundsman Tom Parker has kept both teams guessing on the nature of the pitch he will unveil for the semifinal, but the wear and tear at the end of a long season indicates spin-friendly conditions. But the bat dominated the ball in previous World Cup games at the venue. Australian coach Darren Lehmann expected a wicket similar to the one his team got for the match against Sri Lanka and predicted a high-scoring encounter. “I think the pitch will be very similar to the one we used in the game against Sri Lanka when almost 700 runs were scored, so I think this will be another high-scoring affair,” Lehmann wrote on the official Cricket Australia website www.cricket.com.au. — Agencies
