Semi Final : T20I World Cup 2021

2 Pakistani players likely to miss today’s semi-final!

Scroll down to read the name :

A semi-final Pakistan were so convinced they had won they went half the second innings going through the motions saw itself wrenched from their hands by a freakish innings from Michael Hussey.

The 22 runs he plundered off Saeed Ajmal's final four balls unfortunately became a defining moment of sorts in the spinner's T20 career.

It especially stung Pakistan for two reasons. One, it drew the curtains on the first truly great cricket team of the nascent T20 World Cup era. Second, it established a principle yet to be violated: Australia don't lose to Pakistan in an ICC knockout game.

Aaron Finch's men have the chance to extend that dominance further when they take on Pakistan - arguably the team to beat this tournament, as they were in 2010 - in the second semi-final.

Coming into the World Cup, Australia were plagued by concerns around their form. The batting order felt all wrong; they were too many anchors and openers jammed into the middle order.

Josh Phillipe's non-selection seemed to compound the problem of too few power hitters, while the express pace Australia packed in their fast bowling attack didn't look as if it was built for the UAE.

But since the tournament started, it turned out Finch and David Warner have ensured there's little the lower order has needed to do, while Mitchell Marsh appears to have found form flying in the face of historical evidence.

Mitchell Starc and co. have demonstrated they aren't one-trick ponies, while the spinners - Adam Zampa in particular - has been one of the performers of the tournament.

It seems like the sort of thing you'd say about their trans-Tasman neighbours, but Australia are playing like a team better than the sum of their parts.

With more ICC trophies than the other three semi-finalists combined, the business end of the tournament seems like a bad time to run into Australia.

Then again, this isn't the nicest time to stumble upon Pakistan, either. Babar Azam's side have rolled back the years as if it's the Mickey Arthur era all over again, finding the formula that has made them invincible in the UAE for the last half-decade. A 10-wicket thumping of India put every other side in the tournament on notice, and a blistering group stage sees them become the only side to arrive at the semi-finals with a 100% win record.

Mohammad Rizwan and Shoaib Malik missed Pakistan's training session on Wednesday with mild flu, a day before their semi-final with Australia in Dubai.

Both players were tested for Covid-19 and both tested negative. As with the rest of their squad, they have cleared regular Covid-19 testing through the tournament, including one a couple of days ago. That is part of the ICC's policy to encourage teams to test as often as possible.

The pair woke up on Wednesday morning with what an official described as "light flu and low fever" and were initially advised to delay training. That advice then changed to allow them to miss training altogether.

Pakistan are not overly concerned at the moment about their participation in Thursday's game, and will be reviewing their status in the morning again.

Next Story :

New faces likely for New Zealand series; Virat Kohli looks for rest

The Chetan Sharma-drove National Selection Committee will meet in the following not many hours to pick the crews for the impending T20I and Test series at home against New Zealand. The accentuation, it is perceived, will be on new faces. With Virat Kohli choosing to give up the T20I captaincy, there will be another skipper as well. Rohit Sharma will be the conspicuous decision for the influential position, however the contributions of the new chief will be the way in to the choice of the new players.

Rohit, who is as yet in Dubai, is relied upon to go to the choice council meeting through video conferencing on Tuesday (November 9) evening, even as the sources in BCCI have uncovered that Virat Kohli has requested rest, for the T20Is as well as for a Test. He might be back for the second of the two-Test series.

The word from Dubai, from where most players have left after India's mission in the T20 World Cup finished on Monday (November 8), is that the T20I crew will have another pack of players with most seniors, who were important for the ICC occasion, rested. Any semblance of Venkatesh Iyer and Ruturaj Gaikwad, noteworthy entertainers in the new Indian Premier League (IPL), will be in brawl and Yuzvendra Chahal, a standard in the public white-ball crews not very long, is relied upon to be back. Youthful Umran Malik, thought about the quickest bowler in India, is in the selectors' radar as well, yet the reasoning is that he ought to be attempted in A series first.

India play three Twenty20 Internationals in Jaipur (November 17), Ranchi (November 19) and Kolkata (November 21). The two resulting Tests will be played in Kanpur (November 25-29) and Mumbai (December 3-7). In the mean time, it is discovered that the chose players and the new instructing staff under Rahul Dravid will be approached to report at Jaipur, the scene of the principal game, on November 12. At first, it was arranged that the new instructing staff ought to be at the setting of the main game by November 10 yet the plan must be changed taking into account the deferral in the meetings for the associate mentors - batting, bowling and handling - of the group. It is normal that the meetings will happen late on Tuesday evening or on Wednesday morning.

Veteran India cricketer Virender Sehwag once uncovered an episode when he and afterward captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni supported Virat Kohli and safeguarded him from getting dropped. Kohli has ended up being India's greatest match-victor in each of the three organizations in the previous decade. The current legend has scored wherever he played with 23.161 runs in global cricket.

Be that as it may, Kohli had a dull beginning in Test cricket yet he before long got and become truly outstanding in business. In 96 Tests, he has scored 7765 runs at a shocking normal of 51.09. It was during the India-England Test series in 2016, when Sehwag, who was in the critique box shared the fascinating story when he and Dhoni upheld Kohli on the Australia visit in 2012 and played him over Rohit Sharma in the Perth Test.

"The selectors needed to play Rohit Sharma rather than Kohli at Perth in 2012. I was bad habit skipper and Dhoni was driving the group, and we concluded that we need to back Kohli. The rest is history," Sehwag said. The BCCI office-carriers have had a couple of gatherings with VVS Laxman, tipped to supplant Dravid as the top of the National Cricket Academy, and accept he will give assent yet the batting legend has not yet officially given his gesture.

It is discovered that Laxman, not exceptionally quick to move to Bangalore, is feeling the squeeze to take up the work. In any case, an elective arrangement has been likewise set up on the off chance that Laxman doesn't yield. Vikram Rathour, the current batting mentor of the Indian group, might be approached to assume control over the reins of the NCA as one way of thinking in the BCCI is that the group needn't bother with a batting mentor when Dravid, himself a batting extraordinary, is important for the training staff.