BAN­GA­LORE-Or­gan­is­ers ex­pect a boost in crowd in­ter­est af­ter the Ban­ga­lore Roy­al Chal­lengers won a grip­ping match to be­come the sec­ond In­di­an team to reach the semi­fi­nals of the Cham­pi­ons League Twen­ty20 tour­na­ment. The un­her­ald­ed Arun Karthik smashed a six off the fi­nal ball to clinch vic­to­ry for Ban­ga­lore over the South Aus­tralia Red­backs on Wednes­day and keep In­di­an in­ter­est alive. En­thu­si­asm has been lack­ing at many match­es as In­di­an fans re­main dis­il­lu­sioned af­ter their team's re­cent dis­as­trous tour of Eng­land. Ban­ga­lore plays 2009 cham­pi­on New South Wales in the first semi­fi­nal to­day while the Mum­bai In­di­ans meet qual­i­fi­er Som­er­set to­mor­row at Chen­nai. The win­ners will meet in the fi­nal Sun­day.

The third edi­tion of the Cham­pi­ons League, fea­tur­ing top do­mes­tic Twen­ty20 teams from around the world, has strug­gled to gar­ner in­ter­est in the coun­try as it im­me­di­ate­ly fol­lowed In­dia's dis­ap­point­ing tour of Eng­land where the side failed to win even one match. Sev­er­al In­di­an stars, in­clud­ing Sachin Ten­dulkar, were forced to skip the Cham­pi­ons League af­ter suf­fer­ing in­juries dur­ing the Eng­land tour and some have blamed ex­ces­sive crick­et, es­pe­cial­ly the six-week IPL that be­gan on­ly days af­ter the na­tion­al team's suc­cess­ful World Cup cam­paign as the rea­son for play­er fa­tigue.

Mum­bai was worst hit by in­juries and the or­ga­niz­ers of the Cham­pi­ons League gave it spe­cial per­mis­sion to field five for­eign play­ers as against the stip­u­lat­ed four as Ten­dulkar, Mu­naf Pa­tel and Ro­hit Shar­ma were among the nine In­di­ans who suf­fered in­juries in Eng­land. New South Wales qual­i­fied as the top team from Group A with three vic­to­ries and one de­feat, while Mum­bai joined it as the sec­ond team from the group af­ter open­ing its cam­paign with a thrilling three-wick­et vic­to­ry with one de­liv­ery re­main­ing over de­fend­ing cham­pi­on and fa­vorite Chen­nai Su­per Kings.