The first ODI of five between India and Australia takes place in Chennai on Sunday with both sides looking to get off to a quick start. Although whoever loses will have room to get back into the series these things are much easier to perform in from the front.
India
India go into the series off the back of thrashing Sri Lanka recently. I’m not sure if that was meant to be a warm up for this series but if it was it wasn’t really a helpful one. You would expect India to face many more challenges in these five matches than they did in those games in Sri Lanka and it will be interesting to see how they cope with that.
India are going to be more under pressure with the ball in this series. Sri Lanka offered very little with the bat which is not going to be the case here. They are an improving force with the ball but they might need to be here because they may not want to be taking on Australia in a high scoring shootout.
Australia
These are the first ODIs that Australia have played since they bombed out of the Champions Trophy in the group stages in England earlier in the year. A lot has changed in everything in that time not least the make up of this Australia side. They face a huge winter and while the focus will be on red ball cricket this series could give them some early momentum.
By and large historically it has been the bowling that has been the strength of Australia and I suspect in these conditions that will remain the case. That is not to write their batsmen off though. They have the majority of their squad who have played in the IPL so these conditions will not be alien to them.
Team News
India are without Ravi Ashwin for this series as he is completing a stint in county cricket. Ravi Jadeja is in the squad to replace Axar Patel who is out with an injury he picked up playing football. Shikhar Dhawan also misses out.
Australia have to decide on the makeup of their team. It looks as though Travis Head will open the batting in place of Aaron Finch who is out of the early matches with injury.
[the_ad_group id=”3624″]
Betting
I’m not going to get involved in the match betting in the series until I’ve seen how the sides are going to line up and look to play so this will largely be a watching brief but it is hard to ignore the form of Virat Kohli right now.
He finished the Sri Lanka tour with two centuries in the final two ODIs and an 80 in the T20 match so he is hitting the ball as well as ever at the minute. He has played five ODIs in Chennai and has scores of 138, 80 and 59 in that time so this is a ground he has a decent record at. That all makes me think that he can cover his 38.5pts run line.
Tips
Back V.Kohli – Over 38.5 runs for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with Ladbrokes
Back him here:
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2017
