Australia win the toss in third ODI, elect to bat

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NEW DELHI - Australia has won the toss and elected to bat in the third one-day international against India.

Shane Watson and skipper Ricky Ponting are opening the innings for the visitors in this crucial encounter against Team India at the Feroz Shah Kotla in New Delhi.

While the Indian side remained unchanged from the Nagpur ODI, Australia made couple of changes in their squad, after the team was hit by a string of injuries.

Wicketkeeper Graham Manou and NSW all-rounder Moises Henriques make their one-day debuts, replacing the injured Tim Paine and haun Marsh, while Doug Bollinger has come in for Ben Hilfenhaus, The Indian cricket team will hope to grab a lead in the seven one-day match series against a depleted Australian side when both face off in the third match at Delhi’s Ferozeshah Kotla grounds this afternoon.

India appears on the surface to be the more dominant team going into the match, while Ricky Ponting’s Australians are struggling to put a fit eleven on the ground because of a spate of injuries to their players.

Pace spearhead Brett Lee, all-rounder James Hopes and first choice wicketkeeper Tim Paine are already out of the squad with elbow, hamstring and broken finger injuries respectively.

Ponting, however, is refusing to accept that the momentum in the series has shifted to India and said “I am not a great believer in momentum. Things change too quickly.”

M S Dhoni, is equally confident going into the match, saying that all his team is doing is taking positives from each game.

“We have to start from scratch in every game. Two matches gone, now it has become a five-match series for us and though win brings in confidence, we have to start afresh,” Dhoni said.

The resounding victory in Nagpur will no doubt serve as a huge confidence booster for Dhoni and his men, who came out with a brilliant all-round display to claw their way back into the series after Australia took the lead.

Barring Sachin Tendulkar, the awesome Indian batting line up has looked solid with most of the top order batsmen being among the runs in the first two matches. Dhoni himself led from the front with a blistering 124 off 107 balls while Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir have laid the foundation with their lusty strokeplay.

“It will be like starting from the scratch in Delhi. Hopefully, we will improve in the areas where we did not do well and we will bounce back,” Ponting said.

The team for the match is as follows:

India: 1 MS Dhoni (capt), 2 Gautam Gambhir, 3 Sachin Tendulkar, 4 Virender Sehwag, 5 Yuvraj Singh, 6 Suresh Raina, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Harbhajan Singh 9 Praveen Kumar 10 Ishant Sharma 11 Ashish Nehra.

Australia 1 Ricky Ponting (capt), 2 Shane Watson, 3 Michael Hussey, 4 Cameron White, 5 Adam Vogues, 6 Moises Henriques, 7 raham Manou (wk), 8 Mitchell Johnson, 9 Peter Siddle, 10 Nathan Hauritz, 11 Doug Bollinger. (ANI)