The ODI series between India and Australia concludes on Sunday when the two sides meet in the fifth match in Nagpur. Australia finally got off the mark in the series on Thursday and now they will be looking for back-to-back wins to take into the T20s with them.
India will be disappointed their winning run was ended and they will be looking to rubber stamp their dominance ahead of the shortest version matches next week.
India
I guess the question that merits being asked after the previous match in the series is whether India lost it because they were not the better side or whether they did so because they rested some of their better players, bowlers especially. If it was the latter we might not find out the answer for sure here.
I don’t necessarily think India bowled badly in Bangalore. It is not an easy place to bowl at the best of times anyway but there was certainly a freer approach from Australia. The series being over could have attributed to that. If India did lose because of an easing up in their mentality then I would expect them to be back on it here.
Australia
It may have taken them a while but Australia produced a much better performance in the previous match. The good thing for them is while they played well and won the match it was not a perfect performance so they have things they can improve on for this game which is always something which keeps the focus.
I didn’t think Australia were far away with the ball in the first three matches of the series but they had nothing with the bat. They finally batted well in Bangalore but even then the second half of their innings was not the best. If they can finish the innings as well as they started it in this game they could maintain more respectability.
Team News
India rested Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah and Bhuvneshwar Kumar for the previous match but having lost the game they might decide to recall the trio. That said they play a lot of cricket in the near future so there is no need to play them.
Australia surprisingly left Glenn Maxwell out of the previous game. While I wouldn’t be surprised if they go into this match unchanged they could easily bring Maxwell in to further bolster their batting.
VCA Stadium
This will be the eighth ODI to be held on this ground. India have only played in four of the previous seven and have a couple of wins and a couple of defeats. Australia have a win and two losses from their matches here.
Scores of 300 have been quite frequent on this ground and although the wicket had got tacky in recent seasons the curator has been talking of restoring it to its former glory this week so we should expect the scoring to be good again.
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Betting
While it was nice to see Australia offering something in the previous match we should remember that this is only a dead rubber in name and as such I am not going to get too involved in it. There are a couple of bets that I think are worth taking though.
I think we are going to get a high scoring match here. Both sides looked in good nick in the previous ODI and with the wicket expected to play well and the outfield huge so twos can be picked up regularly I would be surprised if both sides aren’t pushing 300 in this one. The match runs line is 565.5 so we only need 283 from each of them. I think we’ll see that happen so I like the over.
Kedar Jadhav top scored on his home ground on Thursday and at 11/1 he looks a big price to go on and emulate that feat in this match. Generally when he gets in the runs he stays there for a while as we saw against England earlier in the year. He looks a big price especially if India can the Pandya up the order experiment.
Tips
Back Over 565.5 runs for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
Back it here:
Back K.Jadhav Top India Batsman for a 1/10 stake at 12.00 with Skybet
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