India upbeat, Australia downcast ahead of Delhi ODI

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NEW DELHI - After their crushing victory at Nagpur, India will be looking forge ahead in the seven-match One-Day cricket series against Australia when the two meet in the third game, a day-night affair, at Ferzeshah Kotla here Saturday.

The series is nicely poised 1-1, the visitors winning the opener by four runs in Vadodara and the hosts taking the second by 99 runs.

Ricky Ponting’s side has been hit hard with a series of injuries to their frontline players and worse, Brett Lee has been ruled out of the entire series. They sorely missed Lee and James Hopes at Nagpur and the latter is still not fit to play here too.

To make matter worse, wicket-keeper Tim Paine fractured his finger at Nagpur and was ruled out for the rest of the series. His replacement Graham Manou will be in the thick of action within hours of his arrival.

Ponting knows the situation is precarious, but he has shown in the past that he could manoeuvre his resources in adversity.

“I don’t believe in momentum from game to game,” Ponting said when asked whether Indian team would be carrying the confidence from the Nagpur win. “Injuries did cost us more than what we thought in Nagpur,” he said.

Unlike the first two ODIs, the slow Kotla wicket could be a tricky one for both the teams. The Champions League Twenty20 matches were low scoring and Ponting said he was expecting the wicket to be on the slower side and the spinners to play a role.

The Indians, for a change, have no major worries except that their leading batsman Sachin Tendulkar is short of runs. Their attack is well-equipped to deal with the slow and low pitch at Kotla where a total upwards of 250 runs could be a winning target.

There have been murmurs that Tendulkar should be dropped down the order, leaving it to the two Delhi blasters Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir to negotiate the new ball. Dhoni was quick to say that there would not be any change in the order at the top.

Though Dhoni would not expose his cards, the winning Nagpur combination should take the field. On a slow pitch, part-time spinners like Yuvraj Singh and Suresh Raina could also revel as left-arm Ravindra Jadeja is fast developing into a mainline spinner to support Harbhajan.

Teams (from):

India: Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain), Suresh Raina, Ravindra Jadeja, Harbhajan Singh, Praveen Kumar, Ashish nehra, Ishant Sharma, Amit Mishra, Virat Kohli, Munaf Patel, Sudip Tyagi.

Australia: Shaun Marsh, Shane Watson, Ricky Ponting (captain), Cameron White, Mike Hussey, Adam Vogues, Graham Manou (wicketkeeper), Mitchell Johnson, Nathan Hauritz, Peter Siddle, Ben Hilfenhaus, Doug Bollinger, Moises Henrique, James Hopes, Jon Holland.

Umpires: Amish Saheba and Shavir Tarapore

Third Umpire: Sanjay Hazare

Match referee: Chris Broad

Match starts at 2.30 pm