After 47 games in 45 days, Australia and India have earned the right to battle it out for the Cricket World Cup in Sunday's final.
Host nation India are the hot favourites to pick up their third 50-over title after winning all ten of their games during the tournament, including Wednesday's 70-run semi-final victory over New Zealand.
But, since losing their first two group stage games, Australia have found their form with eight straight wins and will send out a team packed with proven winners on the world stage.
- A boundary to be scored in Australia’s first over of the match
- David Warner to score 30+ Runs
- Over 0.5 run outs for India
Aussie Openers Push The Boundaries
Australia began the tournament with a six-wicket defeat to India in Chennai in which they failed to post a total of 200.
They had the hosts on the ropes at 3-2 in the chase, but India's strong middle order steadied the ship and saw them home with almost nine overs to spare.
Their batting approach changed after a game two defeat to South Africa and, since then, Australia have hunted boundaries early and often.
David Warner scored 110 of his 163 runs against Pakistan in boundaries while Mitchell Marsh plundered 122 of his 177 against Bangladesh in sixes and fours.
Travis Head, who came into the team midway through the tournament and scored 109 off 67 balls against New Zealand, has exemplified that approach by continually finding the ropes with attacking shots inside the first over.
Australia have hit at least one boundary in the opening over of their last eight matches and will take encouragement from the fact that the Kiwis hit Indian gun bowler Jasprit Bumrah to the ropes twice in his opening over in Wednesday's semi-final.
Head and Warner will attack up front
Warner To Make A Score
The ground at Ahmedabad has not yet yielded a score above 300 in eight innings with four teams bowled out and one other finishing nine wickets down.
That suggests there will be enough in it for the bowlers, although when batters have got in on the wicket they have been able to pile up the runs.
Four of the five highest individual scores made in Ahmedabad have been by batters in the top three.
That indicates there could be some value in looking at each team's top order when looking at top run scorers for Sunday's game.
Warner, who has gone past 40 in six of his last seven innings against India, is in good enough form to surpass the 30-run mark without too many problems.
He is averaging 52.80 across the tournament and made 41 against India in Australia's opening game before sending a return catch back to Kuldeep Yadav.
Indian batters need to be on their guard
Aussie Fielders To Make Impact
India's performances throughout the tournament mean they are rightful favourites to win the match, but finals rarely tend to turn into one-sided contests.
Rohit Sharma's team will be backed by 130,000 partisan supporters, although that will bring pressures of its own if things begin to turn Australia's way.
There is little doubt that India possess the better bowling group and all of their batters, bar Suryakumar Yadav, are in great form.
But their fielding has been suboptimal at times and that is one area that Australia can get the better of them on Sunday.
Only the Netherlands have suffered more run outs in the tournament than India, who have been dozy at times, and the spectre of what happened to Virender Sehwag in the 2003 final against Australia still haunts the cricket-mad nation.
With the added pressure of the final and razor-sharp Australian fielders lying in wait for any chances, the likelihood of at least one run out of an Indian batter seems high.
