Mumbai face Vidarbha in a rematch of last season's final; Kerala eye maiden final appearance

It's a repeat of last year's final. The difference is unlike in 2023-24, Mumbai will be playing away in Nagpur, VCA ground in Jamtha where Vidarbha registered their only draw of the season. All of their wins at home came at the venue in Civil Lines, where the surface has suited them.

Some of Vidabha's wins this season have been emphatic, like their 198-run victory over Tamil Nadu in the quarter-final, while others have been hard fought. Like the game against Hyderabad, where they stormed back after conceding a 136-run lead.

Vidarbha, however, are still a team in transition. They've lost some key players - like Faiz Fazal (retired), Ganesh Satish (not contracted) and Umesh Yadav (injured) - but a young batting line-up along with the experienced Karun Nair have consistently put up tall totals.

Nair has made up for lost time, having sat out for nearly two years at Karnataka before he switched over to to Vidarbha ahead of the 2023-24. Two seasons in, he's become their most-experienced batter, who is heading into the semi-final on the back of hundreds in his last two matches.

Yash Rathod leads the run charts for them (fourth overall), having turned a corner from not being able to convert his starts in 2023-24, while Harsh Dubey has been one of their standout performers. The 22-year-old allrounder has 59 wickets in eight games, the most this season, along with 441 runs.

Unlike Vidarbha who won six out of their seven games in the group stage to sail into the knockouts, Mumbai squeezed through with four wins in a tight group, narrowly pipping Baroda. They've been in trouble at different times but they've found saviours, Shardul Thakur most notable among them.

Most recently in the quarter-final, they were tottering at 113 for 7 in the first innings before Shams Mulani and Tanush Kotian bailed them out with a 165-run stand, which eventually helped them take a first-innings lead.

In the second, Ajinkya Rahane led from the front, by hitting his first century of the season when it mattered most.

The absence of Yashasvi Jaiswal due to an ankle niggle could be a big miss, as will be the absence of Shreyas Iyer who is away on national duty. Suryakumar Yadav's return to form in the previous game, though, bodes well for Mumbai.

Gujarat, champions of 2016-17, are in the semi-finals for the first time since 2019-20. Kerala are only in their second semi-final of all time, having made it this far in 2018-19, and have never been able to push past this stage. But this team, under head coach Amay Khurasiya, bring with them the promise of changing that anomaly.

Gujarat are unheralded, and have quietly made their performances talk. Barring opener Priyank Panchal, much of the batting line-up is inexperienced. Jaymeet Patel, their highest run-scorer with 582 runs at 48.50, is in his maiden season.

Urvil Patel, the hard-hitting wicketkeeper bat who scored the second-fastest T20 fifty during the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, is in his first full season, as is opener Aarya Desai. Both Urvil and Desai have contributed at vital times. Desai's unbeaten 69 in a 145-chase against Himachal came in a must-win, while Urvil hit 140 in the quarter-final against Saurashtra to open up a massive lead that resulted in an innings win.

Gujarat have fancied themselves to win on red-soil pitches at home courtesy their spinners, led by left-armer Siddharth Desai, who is their highest wicket-taker with 35 scalps. This includes figures of 9 for 36 against Uttarakhand. They will also be boosted by the availability of Ravi Bishnoi, the India legspinner, who is still very inexperienced in first-class cricket.

Kerala's run to the semi-finals has been dotted with key performances from their 38-year old veteran Jalaj Saxena and Salman Nizar. Saxena completed the rare Ranji double of 6000 runs and 400 wickets earlier in the season, while Nizar, their leading run getter with 555 runs, has stood up at key moments. Like in the quarterfinal, when he hit 112. It included a last-wicket stand of 81 with Basil Thampi to give Kerala a one-run lead which proved decisive. A game prior to that, in a must-win, he hit a career-best 150 to lift his team from 183 for 6 against Bihar.

Fast bowler MD Nidheesh has become a formidable force and even took a match haul of ten wickets in the quarter-final. Mohammad Azharuddeen, the wicketkeeper, has come up with two clutch knocks to avoid defeats: the 67 not out against J&K helped arrest a lower-order collapse and guided them into the semi-final, and his second-innings 68 against MP helped secure a draw that put them in the knockouts in the first place.

That Kerala don't have a batter or bowler in the top ten tells you how they've risen as a team.