The ongoing T20I series between India and Australia is evenly poised and the Aussie skipper David Warner will want to end their India tour with a win. Just three days after their first significant victory, they’ve traveled down to Hyderabad, a city whose affection for Warner has multiplied over the last few of years due to IPL.
During the post-match presentation of 2nd T20I, Warner expressed “hopefully the crowd gets behind us in Hyderabad” and he meant it completely. In recent times, the crowd at the Rajiv Gandhi International stadium has been supporting its IPL skipper, who has even brought them title glory in 2016.
Besides the obvious geographical connect, the third and the final T20I is perfect sort of fixture which every cricket fan expects from an India – Australia game. Currently, the yellow army of Warner is looking on par with the men in blue, but the pressure is going to be sky high in the tour finale.
Australia chased down the small total pretty comfortably in Guwahati, but it was their bowlers who did the apt job of restricting the powerful Indian batting line-up. Jason Behrendorff’s sensational performance doesn’t cover the fact that Australia’s middle order is still inexperienced and out of form. After Glenn Maxwell’s back-to-back failures, Warner had to promote Henriques to No. 3 – a move that worked in Guwahati. Yet, there is a sense of shakiness in Australia’s batting order from positions 3 to 7.
On the other hand, India’s batting order is powerful but still seems to be vulnerable. After a top three of Rohit Sharma, Dhawan and Virat Kohli, India’s next four aren’t giving much confidence to the skipper.
In this T20I series, both the team have taken turns at batting poorly to gift a win to each other. as both these teams were restricted to the same score of 118 in the first 2 T20I game. Friday’s game will also give both the teams a chance to prove their batting prowess and whoever does it best will definitely win the game.
Some stats to think about:
- David Warner has scored the most runs in T20 matches in Rajiv Gandhi Stadium in Hyderabad – 1291 runs from 27 innings at 61.48 with two centuries and 11 half-centuries.
- A win in the third T20I would give India their 11th win against Australia – the joint-most by any team against any opponent.
- Virat Kohli has now been dismissed for a duck in each of the three formats against Australia this year, which is rare.
Talking about changes in the squads, one possible change in Indian squad can be of either KL Rahul or Dinesh Karthik – both of who batted in the nets on the eve of the game. Either one of them can get a chance at No. 4 in place of Manish Pandey to add some stability.
While in the Australian team, Daniel Christian, who was dropped in Guwahati, got some batting practice but it seems unlikely that Australia will make any changes with a winning combination.
Probable XIs
India: Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli(c), Manish Pandey/KL Rahul, Kedar Jadhav, Hardik Pandya, MS Dhoni(wk), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Yuzvendra Chahal.
Australia: David Warner(c), Aaron Finch, Moises Henriques, Travis Head, Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis, Tim Paine(wk), Nathan Coulter-Nile, Jason Behrendorff, Andrew Tye, Adam Zampa
