India seek redemption

Stung by the defeat in the series opener despite putting up a big score, India will have to plug their bowling loopholes when they take on Australia in the second one-dayer in Brisbane on Friday, fully aware that any slip-up will make their task of bouncing back difficult.

Chasing an imposing 309, Australia romped home with ease by registering a comfortable five-wicket win to take a 1-0 lead in the five-match series at Perth on Tuesday. And at the Gabba on Friday, the visitors would be hoping to make life difficult for Australia but for that to happen Mahendra Singh Dhoni would expect a much-improved show from his bowlers.

The five bowlers India played proved to be inadequate at the Waca, particularly the spin duo of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, who had a bad day in the office.

For India, there is definitely scope for permutations and combinations among the old names. Lanky pacer Ishant Sharma is fit and available for selection. If Dhoni decides to go in with the same combination which he fielded in Perth, Ishant could come in for Bhuvneshwar Kumar.

The Waca track was slower than expected, but the Gabba wicket is not expected to be similar which provides Dhoni enough reasons to contemplate going in with four pacers.

But the performance of his spin duo would be a concern for Dhoni going into Friday’s match. Both Ashwin and Jadeja were off-colour in the series opener. While the former gave away 68 runs for two wickets in his nine overs, the latter too was expensive costing 61 from as many overs without any success.

And come Friday it will be interesting to see what kind of impact either Ashwin or Jadeja can make as they will look to shrug off the poor show in the previous game.

But consistency is something which Dhoni would look for from the bowling attack.To add to it, Dhoni also does not have definitive part-time options to fall back upon.

Young left-arm pacer Barinder Sran, who made his debut in the last match, was the eye-catcher for India in the losing cause in Perth.

He picked up three wickets giving away 56 runs and the tall Punjab pacer would hope for a repeat performance on Friday.

India’s other two fast bowlers — Bhuvneswar Kumar and Umesh Yadav were not that effective in Perth. While Bhuvneswar was economical, Yadav gave away some runs but both failed to trouble the Australian batsmen much.

The wicket for Friday’s match should be more to the seamers’ liking, not a green top definitely, but rather one with ample bounce and pace.

On the batting front, there isn’t much to complain about for India.India rode on Rohit Sharma’s unbeaten 171 and vice-captain Virat Kohli’s 91 to post 309, a feat never achieved by an Indian team in three ODIs played previously at Perth.

And thus, it can be assumed that the batsmen will be asked to shoulder even more responsibility going ahead. But one of the criticisms emanating from that loss in Perth was that Rohit and Kohli did not do enough to push the scoring rate towards the end.

There has been considerable talk about the top-three batsmen trying to do a bit more, in terms of strike-rate, especially if one or two of them get going like in Perth.

But it would be a little harsh to put the blame on the batsmen as Dhoni himself had said that 309 was a defendable score.The Indians, however, would be wary about the form of Australia skipper Steven Smith.

Chasing the imposing target, Australia rode on captain Smith’s fluent 149 to script the comfortable win in Perth. Smith turned out to be India’s nemesis again, pacing his innings to perfection. His sequence of scores against the ‘Men In Blue’ across formats now reads: 162 not out, 52 not out, 133, 28, 192, 14, 117, 71, 47, 105, 149.

If the Indians were to win the ongoing five-match ODI series in Australia, the visitors will have to find a way to dismiss Smith early.

George Bailey, another centurion for Australia with a 112-run knock in Perth, too would be hoping to carry on his form.