Thoughts: Out of the four quarter final clashes, many say this is ‘the one’. The Indians and the Aussies meet again in a crunch match and just to be clear, there is not much love between these two great rivals. Putting that aside most cricket experts are leaning towards India as favourites, and the Aussies won’t mind that one bit, they love slipping under the radar.

India

Group Stage: 2^nd

Master... Sachin's already amassed two centuries this world cup.

Stars Thus Far: When you go through the players, you cannot and should not go past the great man Sachin Tendulkar. He may be ageing but he still is the best in the world currently by a country mile and this is exemplified with the performances he consistently racks up. With 326 runs at an average of over 99 including two classy hundreds, the little master has been a star for India so far in the World Cup.

India’s strength in the batting is immense and anyone could come up with others such as Sehwag, the young but mature Kohli, Yuvraj,Gambhir, one could say the top and middle order has been the star of the Indian team.

Even though there have been question marks over the bowling strength, the standout from the Indian bowling department has been the experienced Zaheer Khan. He has 15 wickets so far, which is second on the leader board, and you can be assured many of those wickets have come at crucial times for his team.

Strengths: If it hasn’t been obvious enough, the strength of the side comes from the batting. The top order seems to fire almost every match, the consistency is frightening, and they get runs and get them fast. With the likes of Sachin, Sehwag, Gambhir, the list goes on, almost like a dream team list, not only does the line up have immense ability but it creates a mental image of climbing a mountain for the opposition bowling. The batting always seems to cover up any flaws of the bowling.

Weaknesses: The bowling has not really backed up the good work of the batsmen so far for India in this world cup. Other than Zaheer Khan and at times Harbhajan, the bowling has been expsed nd twice have not been able to defend sizable totals against the top sides. The game against England where they were defending 338 really should have been defended, with all due respect to the English batsmen.

The last two games have shown a tendency for shock batting collapses in the late stages of the innings which have restricted their totals to being good totals when they could have racked up much more. The game against South Africa was a major wakeup call when they lost 9 for 20 odd.

Key Player For This Game: The Australians seemed to have struggled against spin against Pakistan and for this reason Harbhajan Singh or ‘Bahji’ must stand up to be counted. He hasn’t really announced himself yet in the tournament and the Aussie clash might just get him fired up and make him lead from the front.

VS

Australia

Group Stage: 3^rd

Back to his best... Lee looks like a rejuvenated bowler.

Stars Thus Far: The man to put his hand up from the green and gold has been the old horse Brett Lee. He has proven that he still has pace, swing and deadly accuracy, the sad thing is that his fellow bowlers haven’t  given much backup or support to provide the killer blows on oppositions this tournament. ‘Binga’ has 12 wickets so far in the tournament and has proven to be one of the best new ball bowlers in the tournament.

Not many others to mention although a positive is that Michael Clarke has shown decent form with the bat.

Strengths: Australia’s strength has been their pace attack. even though all three haven’t fired in the same game yet, the trio of Lee, Tait and Johnson has a good ring to it and has shown glimpses of devastation.

Waqas Tareen

Waqas has played at multiple representative levels of cricket, having been to the 2007 World Cup. Waqas knows what passion is about in cricket and just how much it means to people all over the world.