7th ODI: Australia ask India to bat first

NEW DELHI: Australian captain George Bailey won the toss and chose to bowl against India in the series deciding seventh one-day international at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore on Saturday.

Scorecard

India have replaced Amit Mishra with R Vinay Kumar, while Australia have brought in Nathan Coulter-Nile in place of Mitchell Johnson.

This is expected to be another high-scoring game even though the pitch has tinges of green, but it's nice and hard. At some parts there is grass but that won't make much different. Good pitch for batting.

Australia, apparently, have the preparation for their Ashes series against England later this month as their main concern. They have consequently sent back their best bowler, Mitchell Johnson. The visitors' official line is that he has been asked to prepare for the longer duration matches, the first being a domestic tie starting Wednesday.

Whether this move is to lull the Indians into complacency or a sign that the Australians have given up on the series is unclear. But surely Suresh Raina and Yuvraj Singh, who were both troubled by the pacy Johnson's bowling, will not be complaining.

Yuvraj, with scores of 7, 0 and 0 was Johnson's bunny in all the three innings while fellow-left hander Raina (39, 17 and 16) was marginally better. With their tormentor not in the fray, both these batsmen will look forward to making their mark in the series.

This will be a tremendous Deepavali bonus for India's cricket fans. The pyrotechnics of the top three in the batting order - Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli - have already primed fans for their version of extreme cricket.

While Bhuvneshwar Kumar has been on the ball in the opening overs, he has struggled like the rest in the second powerplay.

The other main bowler, off-spinner R Ashwin, looks lost without the additional fielder in the deep. To be fair, bowlers on both sides have looked out of their depth on these flat tracks.

The challenge for the skippers has been to keep the bowlers' spirit up and MS Dhoni, the original captain cool, seems to be doing a better job at the moment.

Teams:

India: MS Dhoni (Capt.), Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli, Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Vinay Kumar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Shami Ahmed.

Australia: George Bailey (Capt.), Phillip Hughes, Aaron Finch, Shane Watson, Glenn Maxwell, Adam Voges, Brad Haddin, Nathan Coulter-Nile, James Faulkner, Clint McKay, Xavier Doherty.

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Shweta Pandey

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