Key events
1st over: Australia 0-0 (Marsh 0, Head 0) Lovely start from Siraj, he gets some swing in the air and a smidge of movement off the pitch. Marsh is defending on the front foot and then plays a booming… leave. Dot follows dot. A maiden to begin with!
Righto, the indomitable Mohammed Siraj has the ball in hand. Mitch Marsh and Travis Head to open up for Australia. Let’s play!
It’s pitch black where I am in deepest Sussex (England) but I’m pleased to report it is clear and bright at the SCG. No pesky rain delays on my watch thanks very much. The players are readying, we’ll be underway in five minutes.
Australia win the toss and choose to bat first
Crazily, that is the EIGHTEENTH lost ODI toss in a row for India. Pretty sure the probability of that happening would make your brain melt. Anyway, Shubman Gill doesn’t mind, he says he would have bowled first anyway, so there.
“It looks a good surface” say Mitch Marsh. “Sunny conditions, hopefully we bat well and put a good total on the board.”
He confirms one change for Australia. Nathan Ellis is back in for Xavier Bartlett. No rest for Starc and Hazlewood.
Shubman Gill confirms two changes for India – Kuldeep and Prasidh come in for Reddy and Arshdeep.
Australia: 1 Mitchell Marsh (c), 2 Travis Head, 3 Matthew Short, 4 Matthew Renshaw, 4 Alex Carey (wk), 6 Cooper Connolly, 7 Mitchell Owen, 8 Mitchell Starc, 9 Nathan Ellis, 10 Adam Zampa, 11 Josh Hazlewood
India: 1 Shubman Gill (c), 2 Rohit Sharma, 3 Virat Kohli, 4 Shreyas Iyer, 5 Axar Patel, 6 KL Rahul (wk), 7 Washington Sundar, 8 Harshit Rana, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Prasidh Krishna, 11 Mohammed Siraj
Preamble
James Wallace
Hello and welcome to the third men’s one day international between Australia and India from the historic Sydney Cricket Ground. Dead rubber? Pffft.
Australia may have clinched the series with their two wicket win in Adelaide but a bout between these two sides is never dead, for the Aussies it is a chance to put a clean sweep over India for the first time in an ODI series. For India, well it’s a case of stopping that from happening, basically.
Virat Kohli has bagged two ducks in a row, giving a l’orange hue of late to his extremely gilded ODI career. With a quick turnaround between games he might not have messrs Starc and Hazlewood to contend with as a certain Test series of note is looming ever closer.
Play begins at the SCG at 2.30pm local time, an eye squintingly early 4.30am here in Blighty. I’ll be back with the news of the teams and the toss (along with a vat of extremely strong coffee in hand) very shortly.
