 The three time world champions Australia will fine tune there team with the warm-up game against the firm favorite of 2011 ICC World Cup India at M Chinnaswamy, Bangalore.
There are lots of things needs to be tried and tested before the actual World Cup games for both teams. Both teams will get two chances before the actual games to fine tune their bowling as well as selecting the right XI in the tournament. India will have to decide on Virat Kohli and Suresh Raina, while Australia will search for best combination on Indian pitches. Both have been getting games in recent series due to the absence of some of the seniors at the top of the order, but one of them will have to be benched in the World Cup. However if Indian think tank will go by form then it will be Suresh Raina who have to warm the bench. It will very harsh for the man who currently ranked 2nd in the ICC ODI batsmen ranking table to sit out of a single game in this world cup. So the two warm-up game will be very vital from Suresh Raina point of view to perform as he was doing earlier to get his place secure in the starting XI. Since 2009, the top three Indian batsmen Sachin, Sehwag and Gambhir not played together and that is something they have to re-adjust quickly and they have to decide what role each batsmen will have to play during the course of the tournament. It looks like Sachin will bat through while Sehwag, Gambhir, Yuvraj will play their shot right from the word go and if anything goes wrong on any given day then Dhoni and Kohli will play the repairing job in the middle with Yusuf Pathan and Harbhajan Singh provide late assault. Indian will also have to decide on whether to play with three pace attack and one spinner or go with even in the bowling department. However this will depend on the type of pitch India will play on. On the other hand Australian Captain Ricky Ponting have only two games to get back into the groove after missing out the game since last few months because of finger injury. He has played only one ODI since July, has only three centuries in the format in three years, and there have been several calls for him to give up the captaincy. As we have witnessed in last few matches at Bangalore, a high scoring encounter is expected with over 300 score is possible. Since this will be warm-up game both teams are allowed to play with 14 players (only 11 will bat and 11 will field). Match is Schedule to begin at 14:30 PM India Time
India: M.S.Dhoni (Captain & WK), Sachin Tendulkar, Virendra Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Virat Kohli, Yusuf Pathan, Suresh Raina, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, R. Ashwin, P.Chawla, Ashish Nehra, S.Sreesanth, Munaf Patel. Australia: Shane Watson, Brad Haddin (WK), Ricky Ponting (Captain), Michael Clarke, C.Ferguson, David Hussey, Cameron White, Tim Paine (wk), Steven Smith, John Hastings, Mitchell Johnson, Jason Krejza, Brett Lee, Shaun Tait, Doug Bollinger. |
