New Zealand through to final after clinching thriller against India

England head coach Trevor Bayliss knows his side must shut out the noise of an expectant nation as they prepare for a first World Cup final in 27 years.

The host nation produced an inspired display to complete an eight-wicket victory over Australia at Edgbaston on Thursday and will meet New Zealand at Lord’s tomorrow.

With the showpiece event also being broadcast on a free-to-air platform following an agreement between rights holders Sky and Channel 4, expectations will be elevated even further.

Australian Bayliss, though, has called for calm as England look to go one better than they did in their last World Cup final appearance in 1992, when they lost against Imran Khan’s Pakistan in Melbourne.

“We had a chat in the changing room (at Edgbaston) afterwards and realised we have not won anything yet,” Bayliss told BBC radio.

“There is going to be a lot of noise around ‘you guys are now the favourites’, and all this type of thing -- we can’t listen to any of that.

“We have just got to concentrate on the way we have gone about our cricket over the past four years and what has got us to this point and go through our process.”

After Australia were all out for 223 in 49 overs, England opener Jason Roy struck a superb 85 from 65 balls as he put on yet another big stand with Jonny Bairstow to break the back of the run chase.

Roy was fined for showing dissent at the umpire’s decision after he was wrongly given out caught behind. Bayliss, though, feels the 28-year-old can soon put the incident behind him.

“I think it shows the passion Jason has got for the game, and it is such a big game as well, when he was on the verge of scoring a hundred,” the England head coach said.

“He will learn from that and go on to bigger and better things, I am sure.”

The Surrey batsman is expected to be in contention for a place in the Ashes squad but Bayliss was giving little away, keeping his focus on the one-day format.

Bayliss said the return of live international cricket to traditional free-to-air television for the first time since the 2005 Ashes was “an opportunity to influence another generation of young cricketers”.

The 56-year-old is set to step down at the end of his current deal in September, no matter what the summer brings.

“I have always been a believer that four or five years is long enough, whether you are doing well or not,” he said. “It is time for a new voice for the boys, to hopefully take them to another level.”

It probably would not have happened in any case, but even so, India were getting perilously close to winning the hearts of neutrals. Then Goliath did as Goliath does. A superpower superpowered.

Before or during a World Cup, a Bangladeshi cricket fan inevitably has to decide which team they will support once Bangladesh are out of the equation. For a large majority, it's not India. The richest board in the world, the one that has most sway over the ICC -- these qualities do not endear a team to neutrals in sport, where level playing fields are integral to the game's integrity. To bastardise a saying, Indian cricket is so outsizely powerful, only a mother can love it.

Which is a shame, because over this World Cup, India were building a narrative as powerful as those authored by the Australians in 2003 and 2007, and the West Indians in 1975 and 1979. In those four tournaments, there was very little doubt from the start that if these teams played even close to their potential throughout the event, they would win it without much trouble.

There is a different kind of charm to these tales, as opposed to India and Sri Lanka's underdog miracles in 1983 and 1996, or Pakistan's rabbit-out-of-the-hat sorcery in 1992. What India had been doing, like those legendary Australian and West Indian teams, was show the audience the hidden chamber, the trap door that makes the magic trick possible.

Enough with stretched metaphors. The point is that in the narrative arc weaved by India till the end of the league phase, it mattered not if there was mystique in the form of thrilling wins or an unlikely rally. Their tale was of a team so dominant that they were becoming the story of the tournament.

Can anyone stop India? Will India finally have an off day? Can their bowling attack actually be bested by any team in the modern game? Is the seemingly inevitable, inevitable?

The ultimate frontrunners in cricket, in terms of heft behind oaken boardroom doors, were becoming the ultimate frontrunners on the field. And a fascination had begun to take hold to see whether the lab experiment of pouring money, thought, expertise into a cricketing culture over decades would culminate in one of the most comprehensively dominant World Cup performances in history.

Those questions of a paragraph ago were all about on-field matters, and not the usual suspicions that India were being favoured.

That, unfortunately, is all in the past. India eventually did what India does – the oaken doors opened, closed, the ICC harumphed in private, acquiesced publicly, and India had their way.

The pitch for the semifinal between India and New Zealand in Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium was switched at the last moment from a fresh one, as planned, to one that was used twice before in the tournament. The fresh one was at the centre of the pitch, a position usually reserved for the most important match to be played at the venue, in this case, the semifinal.

A used pitch, with wear and tear from previous matches, will aid spinners, and India have a deadlier arsenal in that department. A fresh pitch, which usually plays true and favours batters throughout and, given the strength of the two teams, produces a level playing field.

According to the ICC's playing conditions for the 2023 World Cup, the relevant ground authority – the Mumbai Cricket Association in this case – is responsible for the preparation and selection of the pitch. The ICC also has an independent pitch consultant, Andy Atkinson, to work with the groundstaff, presumably to ensure that there is no undue advantage enjoyed by the home side in a global tournament.

ICC said after the semifinal started that changes to planned pitch rotations are common and this one was made on the recommendation of the venue curator "in conjunction with our host", and that the independent pitch consultant had no reason to believe the pitch won't play well.

But according to the Daily Mail, pitch consultant Atkinson speculated in a leaked email whether the pitch for the final in Ahmedabad on Sunday "will be the first ever ICC CWC final to have a pitch which has been specifically chosen and prepared to their stipulation at the request of the team management and/or the hierarchy of the home nation board."

Good thing he's independent.

So, with this revelation ends the illusion. The questions are not cricketing anymore. They are not even questions anymore. The narrative that seemed thus far to have been woven by superb bowling, near flawless batting and a seemingly bulletproof team has now been adulterated by "the hierarchy of the home nation board".

Turns out that there was a trap door beneath the trap door, and the lever was wielded by people not on the stage.

That is why it is hard for a neutral to support India -- unlike those West Indian and Australian teams, there will always be a suspicion that their dominance is not purely a cricketing one.

This time it is especially sad because it could have been.

Former Australia all-rounder Shane Watson has heaped praises on Virat Kohli for his match-winning 95-run knock against New Zealand on Sunday, saying that the Indian batter has an 'internal computer' when it comes to run chases in white-ball cricket.

"Virat has got that internal computer, which just works so efficiently, and he just knows what you need to do at the right time," Watson told broadcasters Star Sports after the match in Dharamshala on Sunday.

"It's not like it's just like a walk in the park. It's a World Cup game against an undefeated team which is in fine form and his internal computers does his thing. It's absolutely beautiful to watch," he added.

After coming into the crease in the 12th over in a chase of 274, Kohli saw wickets fall at regular succession at the other end.

However, the veteran batter remained undeterred, formed a crucial 78-run stand with Ravindra Jadeja for the sixth wicket to ensure India would go onto win the match.

Watson hailed Kohli for his uncanny ability to make even the trickiest of chase seem easy.

"People have got to realise it's not that easy to chase runs, but Kohli makes it look so easy. He's just done it for so long that he just makes it look so easy," said the former World Cup winner with Australia.

Daryl Mitchell completed a fine hundred only to see two wickets fall quickly at the other end as New Zealand's quest for a record-breaking World Cup semi-final win over India suffered a major setback.

Mitchell came in with New Zealand 39-2, chasing a huge target of 398 at Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium on Wednesday.

But he responded with an 85-ball century featuring eight fours and five sixes, his second of the tournament against India following 130 in a four-wicket pool defeat by the unbeaten hosts in Dharamsala.

Together with New Zealand captain Kane Williamson, he put on 181 for the third wicket to give the Black Caps hope of a second successive World Cup semi-final win over India following a 2019 victory in a rain-affected match in Manchester.

Star batsman Williamson, however, fell for 69 when he flicked Mohammed Shami -- who had dropped him on 52 -- straight to Suryakumar Yadav at deep square leg.

Two balls later, 220-3 became 220-4 in the 33rd over when Shami had Tom Latham lbw for a duck, with the paceman having taken all four New Zealand wickets to fall.

The most any side have made batting second to win a World Cup semi-final is New Zealand's Duckworth/Lewis adjusted 299-6 against South Africa at Auckland in 2015.