 After a long and fighting tour of South Africa, India will look forward to return to India with a ODI series to their name. India will look forward to create history when they will take on South Africa in the 5th ODI at Super Sports Park, Centurion.
India will look forward to win the series and start their next campaign that is biggest tournament of this year on high confidence. But for this there batsmen needs to come good on a batting friendly centurion wicket. At presently series is nicely poised at 2-2, India needs to quickly regroup and sort out their batting woes as they go into the fifth and final cricket one-dayer. India have never won a one day series in South Africa and this will be great opportunity for them to lift the cup just before the mega events World Cup 2011. In the absence of trio Gambhir, Sehwag and Sachin India failed to get off to good start in the last four ODI’s and that’s the worry of concerned going into the decider at Centurion. There middle order also not showed any consistency apart from in-form Viral Kohli. The batting has come a cropper in the series so far with skipper Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh and Suresh Raina failing to consolidate on the starts they got. What will be worrying Dhoni the most is the opening slot as Rohit Sharma's woeful run continues at the top while Parthiv Patel, who replaced an out-of-touch Murali Vijay in the last match, failing to make any impact. Indian dashing left-handers Yuvraj Singh and Suresh Raina needs to perform in the 5th ODI, if India have any chance of beating South Africa in the 5th ODI. South Africa, on the other hand, will be high on confidence after their series-levelling win in Port Elizabeth and would do whatever it takes to prevent India from creating a first on the African soil. All of there batsmen looked in great form throughout the series despite of collapse in the middle overs. JP Duminy in superb touch and he will eye another match winning inning for his side to seal the series in South African favor. In the bowling department also Morne Morkel looked unplayable throughout the series, with L.Tososbe continued to pick up the wickets at regular interval in this series. Dale Styen not looked threatening but with accurate line and length Indian batsmen find themselves hard to score of him. All in all a cracker is in the offing in the final match of the series, which has seen some outstanding competitive cricket from both the sides. South Africa are likely to go into the game with same XI as they played at Port Elizabeth, but India might consider playing an extra spinner in the squad. So Piyush Chawla likely to get game before the World Cup. Likely Playing XI for both teams (Match is schedule to begin at 13:30 PM India Time) India: P.Patel, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Yuvraj Singh, Yusuf Pathan, Suresh Raina, M.S.Dhoni (Captain & WK), Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Piyush Chawla, M.Patel. South Africa: G.Smith (Captain), Hashim Amla, Collin Ingram, AB Devilliers (WK), JP Duminy, Faf du Plessis, Johan Botha, Robin Peterson, Morne Morkel, Dale Steyn, L.Tososobe.
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