As the Indians back home celebrate Republic Day, the Indian cricket team will be fighting against the Australians, just to survive.
In match number 5 of the Carlton Series, a winless India would lock horns with an upbeat Australia, who will be riding high on their 3rd straight win in the series, beating India once and England twice. Since England won the match against the Indians, their survival looked more possible, but after Australia beat them in the 4th ODI, India still have a chance. But that, provided the win tomorrow. But even then the final spot will be possible only if they beat England in the next match with a bonus point, after they’ve beaten Australia tomorrow. Before going that far, however, the task at hand now is to beat Australia to be afloat. The rest, later.
It’s hard to ignore the kind of form the Aussies are currently in. I mean, come on, they’ve just beaten India in the Test series fair and square and they’ve been unbeaten in this series so far. Thus, no points for guessing who will have the upper hand in this match. The only respite that the Indians can take is in the fact that having made it to the finals already, they might just look at experimenting a little bit in this match. They’ve got nothing to lose and frankly, it’s a rather inconsequential match for them. George Bailey will take over the captaincy.
But then, if just refer to the last match that they played against England, 5 of their batsmen scored above 30 and there was a century by Steven Smith that helped them chase down a target of 300+ with quite some ease. Hence, for the Indians, no total looks like a safe bet. Even in the bowling department, almost all their bowlers took a wicket apiece.
The task is cut out for the Indians. It’s a cliched perform or perish match for them. The first blow for the Indians would be the non availability of Rohit Sharma. Too add to that, the batting against the lost match against England was lacklustre, being more polite. 153 was their overall score and the English team cruised through for the loss of one wicket. It’s high time the Indians set their game plan right and  treat this more as a preparation for the World Cup if not anything else.
Else, the hostile conditions and the better teams won’t take long to spell doom for them.