Last Dance Down Under: India fret over bowling attack in Ro-Ko’s Australian swansong

The emotional quotient will be at an all-time high with a lot of moistened eyes expected to witness an embattled Virat Kohli and his partner in many a fight Rohit Sharma playing what could be their last appearance on Australian soil in the third ODI, here on Saturday.

While Rohit Sharma has rightfully earned some breathing space with a fighting 73 off 97 balls albeit in a lost cause, Kohli’s back-to-back ducks, his first ever in international cricket, has definitely made his die-hard fans contemplate whether this is the beginning of the end.

Rohit first came here for the CB Series in 2007-08 while Kohli’s first tour with the senior team was in the 2011-12 season when he made an instant impact with a Test century at Adelaide.

With no ODI series in Australia in the next two years, it is impossible to think that the duo will again be seen Down Under in India blues.

Whether Kohli, in particular, continues to play post Australia series is a matter of conjecture but the final ODI at the iconic SCG will be more than a mere “dead rubber”.

However at SCG, the fans would want those punchy cover drives to come out of the closet and a few of those on-drives and the inside-out lofted shot over extra cover from the modern-day legend.

The match is of consequence as the Gautam Gambhir-coached Indian team looks to avoid a 0-3 whitewash, which will certainly not look great even though the ODI World Cup is a good two years away.

To make matters worse, in the last five ODIs between India and Australia at the SCG, the ‘Men in Blue’ have won only once.

Skipper Shubman Gill and Kohli are both due for a big knock and Gambhir will expect both to fire in the final game.

Clinically outwitted in the last two games, a battered Indian team will be keen to revisit its template of shoring up the batting at the cost of compromising with bowling resources, especially ignoring a genuine match-winner like Kuldeep Yadav, who could have been more than a handful at the Adelaide Oval where the Australian batters struggled to read Axar Patel and Washington Sundar.

The current Indian team has been bullish about playing multi-skilled cricketers but most of them are bordering on being bits-and-pieces players.

Someone like Nitish Kumar Reddy remains under-utilised at No. 8 in the batting order and his deliveries, in early and mid-120s, have hardly had any venom to trouble international standard batters on a regular basis.

In the case of Harshit Rana, the marked drop in pace in his second and third spells speaks volumes about why he isn’t yet ready for international cricket. To come back and bowl second and third spells with the same intensity only comes with years of toil in red-ball cricket, bowling in different match situations and in different conditions.

Prasidh Krishna’s presence in the playing eleven is the need of the hour.

From the first two games, the only takeaway has been Axar Patel punching above his weight, his improvement as a batter and the steady overs that he has been bowling.

If Axar keeps performing like this, India wouldn’t be hard-pressed to recall Ravindra Jadeja in 50-over cricket.

As far as the Australian team is concerned, they have started their two-year journey towards the next ODI World Cup in earnest.

The likes of Matthew Short, Mitchell Owen and Cooper Connolly have displayed admirable technique and lots of cricketing smartness when it has come to planning and execution in slightly pressure cooker scenarios.

In the playing eleven, Matt Kuhnemann, who tormented India in the rain-curtailed opening game, might join forces with Adam Zampa.

This is something that augurs well for the hosts who would want their opener Travis Head to play one of his signature innings that didn’t come off in the first two games.

Squads:

India: Shubman Gill (captain), Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul (wk), Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Mohammed Siraj, Harshit Rana, Arshdeep Singh, Dhruv Jurel (wk), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Kuldeep Yadav, Prasidh Krishna.

Australia: Mitchell Marsh (captain), Xavier Bartlett, Alex Carey (wk), Jos Inglis (wk), Cooper Connolly, Nathan Ellis, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Jack Edwards, Mitchell Owen, Josh Philippe, Matthew Renshaw, Matthew Short, Mitchell Starc, Adam Zampa, Matt Kuhnemann.

Match Starts at 9 am IST.