AHMEDABAD, India - Sachin Tendulkar continues to chase a World Cup title that has eluded him in five previous trips to the quadrennial tournament.The world's leading batsman played his first World Cup match in February 1992 at Perth, Australia, at the age of 18.
If India loses to Australia in this quarterfinal there will be heartbreak for a nation of a billion-plus people which hasn't had a World Cup champion since 1983. Australia has contested the last four finals and won the last three in succession.
Both teams have played patchy cricket in the group stages.
India is yet to beat a major side, with wins over Bangladesh, Ireland, the Netherlands and West Indies. They lost to South Africa, despite a Tendulkar hundred, and failed to defend 338 against England in a high-scoring tie. That was India's fourth-highest World Cup total.
India's famed batting has let it down twice in the last two matches. Against South Africa in Nagpur the last nine wickets fell for 29 runs and against West Indies in Chennai the Indians lost seven wickets for 50.
Australia has beaten Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Kenya and Canada. The much-awaited match against Sri Lanka — a rematch of the 2007 final — was washed out. Australia finished the group round with a loss to Pakistan, ending a run of 34 unbeaten World Cup matches going back to 1999.
Australia is weakened by the lack of a class spinner. Jason Krejza has so far picked up five wickets at 46.60, including two each against Zimbabwe and Canada. Steve Smith has one wicket for 139 runs. Australia has been the most settled team in the group stages, using only 12 players as opposed to 15 by India, but there has been growing public pressure to recall David Hussey at Cameron White's expense.
India's sole triumph was in 1983 at Lord's when Kapil Dev's squad stunned hot favourite West Indies in the final. India reached the 2003 final in South Africa but lost to Australia by 125 runs.
Australia has featured in six of the nine World Cup finals to date and has won four titles: 1987, 1999, 2003 and 2007.
The Australians lost the inaugural final in 1975 to the West Indies and the 1996 decider to Sri Lanka.
The two narrowest victories in terms of runs in the World Cup have been from matches between these two sides. In 1987, Australia won by one run at Chennai. Kapil Dev sportingly agreed with the Australians that one of Dean Jones' shots had cleared the boundary, despite it being signalled four originally. In 1992 at Brisbane, Australia again won by one run on a revised target.
ODIs: Played 104; Australia 61, India 35 NR 8
World Cup: Played 9; Australia 7, India 2
At Ahmedabad: Played 2; 1-1.
Australia is familiar with this ground, having played its opening game of the tournament at Ahmedabad on Feb. 21 against Zimbabwe, winning by 91 runs.
India has won five of its 12 ODIs on the ground. India's last ODI match here was a year ago and ended in a 90-run loss to South Africa. India's last win at the ground was against the West Indies in November 2002.
The average first innings score is 240, which rises to 258 in floodlit matches. It is the ground where Sri Lanka racked up 760-7 declared in the a test match against India in November 2009.
Sachin Tendulkar made his international debut for India in November 1989 and hasn't stopped scoring runs since. That he has 99 international hundreds is the best known stat in cricket at present. In total he has 32,657 runs at 49.70 from a combined 628 test and ODI matches. That is 6,709 more runs and 31 more hundreds than his nearest rival, Ricky Ponting.
His ODI tally is 17,955 ODI runs at 45.11 with 48 centuries, including 3,005 runs against Australia at 46.23 with 9 hundreds. That is an ODI record for runs by any batsman against one country.
He has scored 326 runs at 54.33 at a strike rate of 99.69 in this tournament with hundreds against South Africa and England. An entire nation would love him to follow them up with one against Australia to go with the nine he has already.
If Ricky Ponting scores runs his team can win, but he is a man under pressure following reports he could be stripped of the captaincy ahead of next month's limited-overs series in Bangladesh.
He is third in the list of leading ODI run-scorers with 13,184 runs at 42.39, with 29 hundreds and 79 fifties at a strike rate of 80.40.
In the 2007 World Cup he scored 539 runs at 67.38, with one hundred. In 2003 he made 415 at 51.88 with two hundreds, including an unbeaten 140 off 121 balls in the final against India at Johannesburg.
It is a tribute to his fitness that this will be his 46th consecutive appearance in the World Cup since February 1996.
Australia has won 38 out of the 45 World Cup games he has played.
Ponting has been struggling for runs so far in this campaign with 102 runs at 20.40 at a strike rate of 61.45 and a highest score of only 36 against Kenya.
He last made an ODI hundred 13 months and 19 innings ago against West Indies.
In the group stages, India asked for nine reviews and Australia asked for eight, resulting in two decisions being changed for each side.
Ricky Ponting has been the subject of four reviews when batting and given not out. In two cases, against Kenya and Pakistan, the decision was reversed and was given out.
Marais Erasmus and Ian Gould are the umpires for this match and out of eight and six reviews so far in the tournament, Erasmus had to reverse one decision — involving Ponting against Pakistan. All six of Gould's were confirmed as correct by the replays.
Tendulkar needs 45 runs to become the first batsman to score 18,000 ODI runs. If he kicks on to make a hundred he will become the first batsman to score 100 international hundreds.
It will be Yuvraj Singh's 250th innings. He needs 27 for 8,000 runs and 95 for 1,000 against Australia.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni needs 74 for 6,000 runs.
Brett Lee needs three wickets for 350 and Mitchell Johnson five wickets for 150
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