[1]Margao, Oct. 23: Australia skipper Michael Clarke was a worried man on Saturday morning. This is his fourth tour of India and Clarke would vouch for the fact that this has been the toughest of them all.
Facing the ignominy of leaving the Indian soil without a win for the first time since 1979-80, the Aussies woke up to a dark cloud cover in the morning. But as the day wore on and when the sun finally emerged, Clarke’s smile too was out and shining.
Still, there is no guarantee that the third and final one-dayer will take place at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium here on Sunday. For, if the rain continued to fall on match eve as it did for a good six hours on Friday night, there is a possibility that the encounter will meet the fate as the opener in Kochi did, where the match was called off without a ball being bowled.
The ground resembled a swimming pool on Saturday morning and it needed some serious work from Narayan Raju, the curator from Karnataka, and his team to at least make sure that both teams had a hit in the afternoon. The stadium, where mostly football matches are played, has poor drainage and if the rain returns on Sunday morning, as the met office has predicted, than Raju and his team will have a huge task of getting even a truncated match on.
For the record, India lead the series 1-0 but they too wouldn’t want the final match to meet a watery grave. The win in the second ODI at Visakhapatnam, anchored by the pyrotechnics from centurion Virat Kohli and the aggressive Suresh Raina, has given these young guns a chance to emerge from the shadows of the seniors. And they would want as many opportunities in the middle to cement a place in the World Cup party, which is less than four months away in the Indian sub-continent.
After Sunday’s match, there is only a five-match home series against New Zealand and another five in South Africa for the Indians. So it will be paramount that they get as many match as possible under their belt.
Having said that, Kohli has taken a lead over Rohit Sharma for the race in the middle-order slot and the latter is likely to sit out of Sunday’s match too. Yuvraj Singh, who showed glimpses of returning to form with a 58 in Vizag, and openers Shikhar Dhawan and Murali Vijay will want to make best use of the opportunity.
For the Australians, there is not to much to chose from. Having sent back Michael Hussey and Doug Bollinger, Clarke has just 12 men including himself to chose from.
While Callum Ferguons is guaranteed to take Hussey’s place, it would be interesting to see if the explosive David Warner is unleashed.
All that, however, depends of whether the rain will stay away, and if it does then it will end India’s long wait for a ODI series win over Australia at home since 1986.
Pic Caption:
Indian captain M.S. Dhoni tries his hand at archery in Margao on Saturday. India lead the three-match ODI series
1-0.
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