🏏Australia vs. India: 3rd ODI at Rajkot on 27/09/2023 D/N🏏 - Page 2

India go into their last game ahead of the home ODI World Cup with several boxes ticked over the past week. This final fixture was meant to serve as a dress rehearsal for their first World Cup game against Australia, but they go into it with a severely depleted squad. Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli are back though, and will have India's first-ever ODI series whitewash against Australia on their agenda while adding to their momentum on the road to the showpiece event.

Australia, one of the favorites for the World Cup, has had a contrasting run of form. They arrived in India at the back after losing three successive ODIs against South Africa and have proceeded to add two more to the defeats column. Sean Abbott reckoned Australia's dismal show in India had been down to lack of execution, despite doing 'some right things' along the way.

Another defeat might still not mean much in the grand scheme of things as far as the World Cup is concerned for the five-time champions, but a win on Wednesday in Rajkot will do a world of good to the morale before they move to another daunting venue, Chennai - for their opener.

There's a special guest at the venue! Cheteshwar Pujara is around and was seen greeting some of the players.

Umair: "Average score 1st innings at rajkot??" Here are the list of scores from the three ODIs at Rajkot. Batting first looks like a good option.

Neal: "Looking forward to another Ravi Ashwin audition today. Axar and Washy are both wonderful cricketers, but I reckon opposition players fear Ravichandran as a bowler the most. "

Australia have won the toss and have opted to bat

Australia: 1 Mitchell Marsh, 2 David Warner, 3 Steven Smith, 4 Marnus Labuschagne, 5 Alex Carey (wk), 6 Glenn Maxwell, 7 Cameron Green, 8 Pat Cummins (capt), 8 Mitchell Starc, 10 Tanveer Sangha, 11 Josh Hazlewood

India: 1 Rohit Sharma (capt), 2 Virat Kohli, 3 Shreyas Iyer, 4 KL Rahul (wk), 5 Suryakumar Yadav, 6 Ravindra Jadeja, 7 Washington Sundar, 8 Kuldeep Yadav, 9 Jasprit Bumrah, 10 Mohammed Siraj, 11 Prasidh Krishna

Pat Cummins | Australia captain: We’re going to have a bat. Looks like a good wicket, not sure how it’ll change in the 100 overs. GOod to get game time for everyone, don’t want to go into a world cup cold. Results haven’t gone our way but good day to change that. Different conditions here but we’ve played a lot over here so no surprises. We’ve made five changes, Starc and Maxwell are back. Tanveer Sangha is making his debut.

Rohit Sharma | India captain: Conditions are much better here, looks like there’s good weather. Decent temperature as well, we’re just looking forward to this game. The breaks are more important from a mental perspective than a physical one. Very happy with how we played, almost everything we wanted to do we got it done. Gives us a chance for us to see what we want to do. Looks a bit dry, it’s going to play slightly better under lights, we wanted to chase anyway. Let's see if we can make use of the two new balls. Myself, Virat, Kuldeep are all back. From the last game, Ashwin is also missing, Washington is in. Ishan is not well, he’s got viral fever so he misses out.

Pitch report: "Lush green outfield. 66m and 67m square boundaries, 79m hit down the ground," says Sanjay Manjrekar before he hands it over to Brad Haddin. "Beautiful covering of grass and it's very even. It's (surface) a lot harder than the previous games. The average first innings score is 311. I think there will be a lot more skid than spin," opines Brad Haddin.

Hello everyone

Lots of changes in the team

Some really interesting team news. Kohli to open. No Ishan Kishan. He is ill. And no Ashwin. Jadeja, Washington Sundar and Kuldeep Yadav all playing.

Australia welcome back Marsh, Cummins, Starc and Maxwell. Tanveer Sangha is playing in place of Adam Zampa.