India 267 for 6 (Kohli 84, Iyer 45, Rahul 42*, Ellis 2-49, Zampa 2-60) beat Australia 264 (Smith 73, Carey 61, Shami 3-48, Jadeja 2-40, Varun 2-49) by five wickets
Dubai will host the final of the Champions Trophy, and India will be in it, after proving their edge over a weakened Australia side in an absorbing first semi-final. Their win wasn't achieved without a fight, however, and Australia may yet look back on several moments that could have moved the contest in other, tantalising directions.
In the end, India's quality and experience made the telling difference, and the member of their line-up who most embodies those words was a central figure. Virat Kohli had made one of his trademark chase-controlling hundreds earlier in the tournament, against Pakistan, and seemed set for another here, only for an uncharacteristic attempt at a big hit to cut his innings short at 84. By then, however, he had passed 8000 runs in ODI chases, and whittled this one down to a more-than-manageable 40 off 44 balls.
They only needed 33 of those balls, as KL Rahul and Hardik Pandya all but sealed the deal before the latter departed with India one hit away. And as in a similar chase during the Chennai World Cup clash between these sides in 2023, it was Rahul who finished things off, this time with a six over long-on off Glenn Maxwell.
Rahul and Hardik hit five sixes and three fours between them, but even that late spurt didn't take India's boundary count (16 fours and seven sixes) past Australia's (20 and eight). Their win, instead, was built on busy-ness: they only faced 124 dots to Australia's 153, and ran 158 of their runs between wickets to Australia's 129.
As much as this was down to the way Kohli and his colleagues - five other India batters got past 25 - moved the ball into gaps and ran between wickets, it was also down to the difference in quality between the two bowling attacks, particularly the spinners. India's spinners ended the game with a collective dot-ball percentage of exactly 50, and Australia's just over 39.
India stuck with their four-spinner strategy on a bone-dry pitch that promised plenty of turn, but as it happened, the surface was merely slow and low. India's spinners didn't necessarily have the means to run through the opposition, but they exerted far better control than their Australian counterparts, keeping the stumps in play and restricting the batters' scoring areas.
For all that, Australia threatened at various points to run away to a 300-ish total after choosing to bat, and three of their batters played innings that could have been match-winning on another day. All three, however, fell just when they seemed at their most dangerous, and all three had a hand in their own dismissals.
Travis Head, put down by Mohammed Shami off his own bowling in the first over of the match, took a while getting to grips with the slowness of the surface, but peppered the boundary once he did, rushing from 1 off 11 balls to 39 off 32 to give India flashbacks of Ahmedabad 2023. Then, facing his first ball from Varun Chakravarthy in any format, including the IPL, he aimed big down the ground and miscued a wrong'un to long-off.
Then Steven Smith, manipulating his bat face brilliantly to whisk the spinners over midwicket, drive them through the covers or launch them straight, made a smart, proactive 73, putting on half-century stands with Head, Marnus Labuschagne and Alex Carey. He too enjoyed slices of luck; Shami put down a return catch off him as well, though with his left rather than right hand, and Axar Patel made him inside-edge a drive into his stumps only for the bails to stay put.
But with Australia 198 for 4 in the 37th over, he stepped out to try and drill Shami between cover and mid-off, only to lose his shape and miss a full-toss that crashed into the base of off stump.
Five balls later, Australia had lost another key wicket, with Glenn Maxwell following up a slog-swept six off Axar with a missed pull off a stump-bound skidder. The game had swung India's way in the matter of minutes.
Carey was still there, though, and he was, perhaps, playing the innings of the match to that point. Coming in at a tricky juncture - Australia were 144 for 4, and Ravindra Jadeja had just sent back Labuschagne and Josh Inglis in quick succession - he counterattacked decisively, picking vacant spots in the outfield and attacking them with no half-measures. His first boundary, off the sixth ball he faced, set the tone, as he backed away to expose all three stumps and create room to loft Jadeja over mid-off - the length didn't quite allow him to middle the shot, but he went through with it in the knowledge that there was no fielder patrolling that boundary.
In that vein, through sweeps, lofts over the covers and reverse-sweeps, Carey had motored to 60 off 56, but just when it seemed imperative for him to bat through the innings, with Australia seven down in the 47th over, he turned around for a risky second run and was caught well short by a brilliant direct hit from Shreyas Iyer two-thirds of the way back at backward square leg.
All these moments added up to Australia being bowled out for 264, with three balls remaining.
It was the kind of total that allowed India to pace their pursuit and not go searching for boundaries, though the early exchanges suggested otherwise.
Shubman Gill danced down the track to put Ben Dwarshuis away with an eye-catching short-arm jab, before inside-edging into his stumps later in the over while trying to steer him fine, perhaps an injudicious shot in these conditions.
Rohit Sharma, meanwhile, went after the bowling as he usually does in the first powerplay, and played an innings that somewhat echoed Head's: there were a couple of breathtaking hits, including a pulled six off Nathan Ellis; there were two dropped chances, neither entirely straightforward, but both catchable, by Cooper Connolly and Labuschagne; and then a dismissal off a risky shot, a sweep off too-straight, too-full ball from Connolly.
That left India 43 for 2 in the eighth over, and Connolly was finally able to breathe after a torrid match to that point. Earlier in the day, opening in place of the injured Matthew Short, whom he had replaced in Australia's squad, he had fallen for a nine-ball duck that also included six successive plays-and-misses off Shami.
Connolly could have had even more joy in his sixth over, when Kohli, looking to work his left-arm spin into the on side, sent a leading edge looping towards Maxwell at a catching short cover. Maxwell dived right, but couldn't hold on to the one-hander. With Kohli on 51 and India 134 for 2, Australia could have had a foot in the door had this moment gone their way.
That apart, though, Kohli was making things look deceptively easy, playing nothing but old-fashioned percentage shots but somehow scoring quicker than Iyer - who was moving around his crease constantly, often to scoop the ball over his shoulder - in a third-wicket stand of 91. Kohli only hit five fours in all - two pulls off the spinners and one off Ellis were particularly eye-catching for the speed of his footwork - but had no trouble in keeping the scorecard moving.
This was partly down to Australia being forced to concede singles to deep fielders thanks to the limitations of their spin attack, which included one proven frontliner in Adam Zampa, a legspinner playing just his fourth ODI in Tanveer Sangha, and three batting allrounders or part-timers in Connolly, Maxwell and Head. Given the total he was defending, too, Smith had to protect the boundaries, and allow the singles to drip away while waiting for an opening.
This came when Iyer, making room to cut, was bowled by Zampa's quicker ball, leaving India needing 131 from 142 balls. They were still heavy favourites, though, given their batting depth. They settled into the seeming pattern of Kohli looking to bat through the chase with Axar - batting in his now customary No. 5 slot - and then Rahul taking on the bowlers at the other end in partnerships of 44 and 47.
Just when things were going exactly to plan, and just when a century seemed to be Kohli's for the taking, he fell in the most un-Kohli-like manner. Rahul had hit Zampa for a straight six earlier in the over, and India were well in control of their required rate. It isn't usually the kind of moment Kohli picks to try and hit a six, but it was on this day. He picked the wrong'un, but the ball likely turned less than he expected, and forced him to hit straighter than intended, straight to the fielder at long-on. Kohli may be the world's most exacting calibrator of chases, but even he's given to the odd human impulse.
