(Cricket news) The favorites in the competition and the reigning winners meeting to secure their place in the championship game is rather appropriate given that this edition has already offered a little bit of everything.

Thousands of blue shirts were present to watch their heroes thrash Australia on Monday afternoon, sending India into the semifinals of this year’s T20 World Cup. Outside of the host countries, India has, without a question, the strongest fan base of any country.

With a magnificent 92 runs off just 41 balls in the first innings, Rohit Sharma led his team to the second-highest total of the tournament (205/5), only surpassed by the West Indies’ 218/5 against Afghanistan in the first phase’s last match.

Despite losing David Warner early doors, the Aussies got off to a brisk start with Travis Head taking it to the Indian opening bowlers but the spin duo of Kuldeep Yadav and Axar Patel slowed the run rate significantly in the middle overs, which Mitchell Marsh’s side were unable to recover from.

The Men in Blue are one of only two sides, along with South Africa, that have reached the last four without losing a game, with their only dropped points during the group stage coming as a result of their match against Canada being washed out without a ball bowled.

All else aside, if India could have chosen any of the remaining three teams to face in this match, it would likely be England, as it was the Three Lions that knocked them out in this very match in the 2022 T20 World Cup.

When these two met at the Adelaide Oval in the last edition of this tournament, Alex Hales and Jos Buttler led England to victory with what still stands as the highest any-wicket partnership in T20 World Cup history (170*).

That knock surpassed Rilee Rossouw and Quinton de Kock’s 168 made earlier in the same competition and that was also the last time these T20 World Cup champions have faced each other in the shortest format of the game in any competition.

Buttler posted an unbeaten 80 that day as the Three Lions won without losing a wicket, and the skipper pulled off a similar feat in the last match at this World Cup, scoring 83* alongside his current opening partner Phil Salt to lead his side to a 10-wicket victory over the United States.

While England ultimately reached this stage of the competition by finishing two points ahead of the West Indies in the Super Eight, the significance of Buttler’s knock at the time was huge, as it came before the Windies’ match against South Africa, when the co-hosts had a significantly better net run-rate.

However, aside from their victory against the US, the Three Lions have been far from convincing, not just in this competition, but in the white-ball formats for last couple of years, during which they were dumped out of the ODI World Cup in the group stage and suffered T20 series defeats against New Zealand and the West Indies in the last six months.

Arshdeep Singh caught the eye at the recently concluded Indian Premier League for the Punjab Kings and has continued his excellent form in this competition, now the tied leading wicket-taker on 15 alongside Afghanistan’s Fazalhaq Farooqi.

After a couple of solid knocks, Virat Kohli was dismissed without troubling the scoring against Australia. With that, the two-time leading run-scorer of the T20 World Cup matched an unwanted feat, joining former India fast bowler Ashish Nehra to have bagged a brace of ducks in a single edition of the tournament.

Buttler’s knock of 83* in the last match has taken him to eighth in the leading run-scorer standings in the competition with 191, followed by Phil Salt in ninth on 183 and a strike rate of 166.36, which is the best of the top-10 on the same list.

Chris Jordan made a very strong case to be included in the starting 11 in the final, taking a blinding catch to dismiss Harmeet Singh in the last match before wrapping up the US innings with a hat-trick.

India squad: Rohit Sharma (c), Hardik Pandya, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant, Sanju Samson, Shivam Dube, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj

England squad: Jos Buttler (c), Moeen Ali, Jofra Archer, Jonathan Bairstow, Harry Brook, Sam Curran, Ben Duckett, Tom Hartley, Will Jacks, Chris Jordan, Liam Livingstone, Adil Rashid, Phil Salt, Reece Topley, Mark Wood

Also read: It’s emotional down here, we’re in final: Steyn, Smith laud SA for T20 WC final entry