After once again continuing their unbeaten group stage run, India will head towards their toughest challenge as the knockout stages get underway in the T20 World Cup 2024. The Men in Blue will take on the defending champions England in the second semi-final of the tournament on Thursday, June 27 at Providence Stadium, Guyana.
The Rohit Sharma-led side has once again shown their dominance in the group stages beating all the opposition they faced barring a washout against Canada. On the other hand, England qualified for the semi-finals after a mini scare of being knocked out in the group stage itself by Scotland. However, Australia’s win over Scotland in their last fixture helped them seal their spot in the Super 8s.
They later qualified for the semi-finals after beating West Indies and the USA in the Super 8s. With both teams coming into the game riding high on their winning momentum, the upcoming fixture promises to be the highly anticipated clash of the tournament. However, bad weather is set to spoil the clash with heavy rain predicted during the fixture.
According to weather.com, 60% rain chances are predicted on the match day in Guyana diminishing the possibility of a full-fledged game. The rain prediction starts at 33% at the start of the game at 10:30 am local time and goes up to 59% at around 1 pm. Hence, a stop-start kind of game is expected to take place which is likely to leave both the players and the fans frustrated.
However, to facilitate the completion of the game, the ICC has allotted a total of 250 minutes of additional time for both the semi-finals. Hence, the ground staff will have enough time to make the ground ready for the contest if the weather allows.
In case the game gets washed out, the team finishing higher in their Super 8 group will qualify for the final. Hence, India are better placed than England as they topped Super 8 Group 1 by winning all of their matches while England finished on second spot with two wins out of three games. However, both the teams and fans will hope for a complete 40-over game between the two heavyweight white-ball teams of modern day cricket.
