NSW beat Victoria and Enter into the Final

New South Wales 169 for 7 (Warner 48, McKay 3-27) beat Victoria 90 for 9 (Henriques 3-11)
    There was no nerve-jangling, last-ball finish today, like there was when New South Wales pipped Victoria twice to win last season's Big Bash. Instead, the Australian champions delivered a clinical  performance on a difficult Feroz Shah Kotla pitch, one that ensured the first semi-final of the Champions League was one of the most one-sided matches of the tournament.

     On the same pitch where fewer than 200 runs were scored in the match between Delhi Daredevils and Cape Cobras a day ago, the NSW openers David Warner and Phillip Hughes provided a powerful start, which allowed them to post 169, far more than the 110 Victoria captain Cameron White had hoped to limit them to. A tough chase became virtually impossible when offspinner Nathan Hauritz, who was given the second over, struck twice in three deliveries, getting rid of Victoria's openers.

      The build-up to the highly anticipated contest between the Australian sides centered around how difficult the track would be for power-hitting and, when Hughes was struck on the arm by a bouncer from Peter Siddle in the second over, it seemed the batsmen would have toil for their runs.Warner, though, doesn't toil for his runs. His Australia call-up and an IPL contract were results of his ability to tear into bowling attacks and he did just that in front of a disappointingly thin Delhi crowd. The stand-out feature of his innings was his straight-hitting on a pitch with low bounce: both his sixes were clean hits over long-off and he started the onslaught with a searing flat-batted swipe past the bowler, Shane Harwood, in the third over.

      That boundary began a prosperous period for NSW. Warner was sublime, bludgeoning 25 runs off ten deliveries he faced from an off-colour Siddle. He rounded off the Powerplay with a lofted straight drive over Siddle's head and launched him to the extra-cover boundary to take NSW to 56 Victoria got a lucky break in the next over, when Warner was run out attempting a suicidal run after Hughes pushed the ball to point. A livid Warner stormed back to the dug-out, falling two short of a well-deserved half-century.