With a 1-0 lead in the 5-match ODI series, the men-in-blue are set to lock horns with Australia in the 2nd game in Nagpur on Tuesday. The Virat Kohli-led side beat Australia by six wickets in the series opener on Saturday. It was a welcome win for India after losing the T20 series 0-2. With only four ODIs remaining before the World Cup, the hosts will look to finalise the “two available spots” in an otherwise settled squad.
Australia, on the other hand, would look to sharpen their batting skills. For their coach Justin Langer, out-of-form skipper Aaron Finch would be a definite concern. Finch who had scores of 0 and 8 in the T20 series continued his bad run in the first ODI.
Coming to toss in the 2nd ODI, Australia have won the toss, for the fourth time in a row in this series, and have opted to bowl first. They have made two changes for today's game. They have got Shaun Marsh and Nathan Lyon in place of Ashton Turner and Jason Behrendorff.
“We're going to have a bowl. We expect it to spin a bit and hopefully, when the lights come on, it might play better. We didn't play our best in the last game, obviously, Dhoni and Jadhav played well to get them across the line. A bit more improvement in the batting and bowling should help,” said Finch at the toss.
On the other hand, Kohli hasn’t made any changes in the side and will play the same playing XI.
“We wanted to bat first, pretty much a no-brainer. Not much dew in the evening and it's a dry surface. Not typical of the kind of pitches you get here, doesn't look like it will bounce much. We expect it to deteriorate further as the game progresses,” said Kohli.
India: Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli(c), Ambati Rayudu, MS Dhoni(w), Kedar Jadhav, Vijay Shankar, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah
Australia: Usman Khawaja, Aaron Finch(c), Shaun Marsh, Marcus Stoinis, Peter Handscomb, Glenn Maxwell, Alex Carey(w), Nathan Coulter-Nile, Pat Cummins, Nathan Lyon, Adam Zampa