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India secured their place in the Final of the ICC Champions Trophy following an emphatic 8-wicket win when they outclassed Sri Lanka in Cardiff.
Dhoni will captain India in the Final when they head to Edgbaston to face England in the last tournament of it’s kind.
Sri Lanka and India were declared joint-winners of the Champions Trophy Final in 2002, when 110 Overs of cricket ended in no result following heavy rain.
However, there was to be no draw this time round, in fact far from it as India dominated the Sri Lankans.
Batting first were Sri Lanka, who collated a score of 181 runs within 50 Overs, but the batsmen they were relying on had far too mediocre performances.
Captain Angelo Mathews was an influential part in Sri Lanka’s final performance as he hit 51 runs. But his fellow batsmen were simply not good enough to put up a challenging score for the Indians.
When Sri Lanka found themselves 41 – 3 following Sangakkara’s dismissal, many were expectant of a collapse to commence. Sri Lanka found their rhythm though and as they dragged on too 199 – 3 before Jayawardene fell to another wicket.
Some batting of significance for Sri Lanka but it was not enough, and India found themselves in a very comfortable position on the chase.
India only conceded two wickets as they stormed their way to 182 runs in 35 overs. 68 runs by Dahwan and 58 scored by Kohli allowed India to cruise to a comfortable win.
The Captain’s spoke of the game from their perspective:
“The bowlers have done really well but still there are a few areas where we’d like to improve. It was still doing a bit and we had to keep a few overs for the fast bowlers at the death, so the only two (seam-bowling) options were Virat and me. It went pretty well, which meant we could keep Ashwin for later when they had lots of a left-handers.”
– MS Dhoni, India Captain
“We didn’t play well but credit should go the Indian bowlers – they bowled really well. All our younger guys need to take responsibility. We choked in the semi-finals but the credit should go to the whole team for the character they showed after (we lost) the first game.”
– Angele Mathews, Sri Lanka Captain
Sri Lanka under-perform in the Semi-Finals and they crash out hard to India.
The Indians look on some fine form in this tournament, but so do their opponents on Sunday, England.
Can India with the combination of experience and rising stars get their hands on the Champions Trophy?
It is going to be one spectacular final. England vs India in the ICC Champions Trophy Final, this Sunday.
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IMAGE COURTESY: GETTY IMAGES, AFP
Quotes attained via BBC SPORT
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