India may be more familiar than Australia with surroundings in Derby but Nicole Bolton is confident the world champion can win anywhere if its produces its best cricket.
Mithali Raj’s side has won all four of the games it has played at the County Ground, where India meets Australia in the second ICC Women’s World Cup 2017 semi-final, including against host England in the opening match of the tournament.
But it was Australia who came out on top when the two sides met at Bristol in the group stage as Meg Lanning and Ellyse Perry both made unbeaten half-centuries.
And Nicole Bolton, who has scored 337 runs at 56.16 in the tournament thus far, is confident Australia can adapt quickly to conditions in Derby and book a place in the final to be played at Lord’s.
"We'll make sure we're really clear what our plans are. On any given day, it's irrelevant where we play, if we play our best cricket hopefully we'll win the match,” she said.
"India have played a couple of matches at Derby as well so they'll be pretty familiar with the conditions as well.
"We can't afford to be off our game, as you have seen throughout the tournament, if you have an off day the other team can get a big jump on you.
"We'll have to do a bit of homework, look at the conditions and see what Derby has to offer because I think India will come out and really take it to us.
"With the extra break heading into the game, we'll be able to familiarise ourselves with the ground and the conditions and have a look at some footage as well.”
India captain Raj has been in fine form with the bat herself though, scoring 356 runs in seven innings and becoming the first woman to surpass 6,000 runs in one-day cricket in the process.
She scored 69 in defeat to the Australians earlier in the competition but knows that counts for nothing when India meets the reigning world champion on Thursday.
“It’s all about how the teams respond to the situation and the conditions on the day,” she added.
“How the players play the situation is important because having said that Derby is our home ground, you need to perform on that day to win.”
“We’ve played a lot of the group stage here, four games, so we are aware of the conditions and that is our advantage.
“But Australia is a very good side. They won the last edition of this tournament and they have a lot of players who have played in high-pressure games.
“But for this Indian team, it is going to be a big game and if we can pull out one win, it will be exceptional by the team.”
The match will be live on: Star Sports 1, Star Sports HD and Hotstar in India; SS Mix and SS Cricket (red button) in the UK; Fox Sports 505/506 and GEMS in Australia; Star Sports in Bangladesh; SKY Sport 1, Skygo, Fanpass and Sky.co.nz in New Zealand; Channel Eye, Star Sports and Hotstar in Sri Lanka; TEN Sports, PTV Sports, SONY LIV and sports.ptv.com.pk in Pakistan; SuperSport 2, SuperSport 6 Africa, Supersport.com and SS App in South Africa; ESPN Caribbean and Espnplay.com in the West Indies. For more information, see your local listings.
Squads:
Australia: Meg Lanning (captain), Sarah Aley, Kristen Beams, Alex Blackwell, Nicole Bolton, Ashleigh Gardner, Rachael Haynes, Alyssa Healy, Jess Jonassen, Beth Mooney, Ellyse Perry, Megan Schutt, Belinda Vakarewa, Elyse Villani and Amanda-Jade Wellington.
India: Mithali Raj (captain), Ekta Bisht, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Jhulan Goswami, Mansi Joshi, Harmanpreet Kaur, Veda Krishnamurthy, Smriti Mandhana, Mona Meshram, Shikha Pandey, Poonam, Nuzhat Parween, Poonam Raut, Deepti Sharma and Sushma Verma.
Umpires: Shaun George and Ahsan Raza (on-field); Adrian Holdstock (third umpire); Langton Rusere (fourth umpire). Match referee: David Jukes.
