India look to seal T20I series against Australia

Guwahati, Oct 9 (IANS) Coming from a nine-wicket win, in-form India will look to continuing their domination of Australia and seal the three-match Twenty20 International (T20I) series at the Barsapara Cricket Stadium here on Tuesday.

India, who are ranked fifth, started the T20I series on a winning note outclassing the visitors in every department to register a nine-wicket victory via the Duckworth/Lewis method in a rain-marred match in Ranchi on Saturday.

The hosts, who produced a brilliant all-round show in the previous match, will hope to deliver a similar performance here.

The batting department will largely be dependent on hard hitting batsmen Rohit Sharma, skipper Virat Kohli, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Hardik Pandya.

Batsmen Shikhar Dhawan, Manish Pandey and Kedar Jadhav will only look to adding depth to the formidable India batting.

Kohli might also fancy including veteran pacer Ashish Nehra in the team.

Pacers Jasprit Bumrah and Bhuvneshwar Kumar will spearhead the bowling department for the hosts. Wrist spinners Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav will look to provide brakes on the Australian batting which failed to look lethal in the previous match.

However, the seventh ranked Australian side will look to re-work on their strategies to get back to winning ways in the T20I series.

Skipper David Warner along with Aaron Finch and Glenn Maxwell will be the key batsmen for the visitors to get them off to a flying start.

The bowling will largely depend on pacer Nathan Coulter-Nile and spinner Adam Zampa, who failed to click in the last T20I.

Squads:

India: Virat Kohli (captain), Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wicket-keeper), Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Manish Pandey, Kedar Jadhav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Dinesh Karthik, Ashish Nehra, Lokesh Rahul, Axar Patel.

Australia: David Warner (captain), Moises Henriques, Aaron Finch, Tim Paine (wicket-keeper), Daniel Christian, Glenn Maxwell, Jason Behrendorff, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Travis Head, Adam Zampa, Andrew Tye, Kane Richardson.