India eye World Test Championship final berth while Australia hope for resurgence in 3rd Test of the BGT series

After a brief lull in the war between India and Australia, things are all set to heat up again as the two cricketing behemoths take the yard for the third Test at Indore. With the series retained already, the hosts would now eye the confirmation for the WTC berth while the visitors would be desperate to eye a turnaround of affairs after a disastrous outing in the first two fixtures of the series.

India will need someone to man their top-order in the face of the Australia fast-bowling mafia that will be rejuvenated as Mitchell Starc returns. To accompany him in his exploits, Australia will throw their arms wide open to the possibility of Cameron Green’s return.

A couple of changes may also be on the horizon as India may tend to tinker with their opening spot as Shubman Gill still waits in the squad and KL Rahul will need some serious momentum to go his way if he has to dissuade the Indian thinktank of the notion of a possible shuffle.

Australia, on the contrary, will be without their captain, Pat Cummins who is currently back home to be by the side of his mother while Josh Hazlewood has also flown back to Australia in order to tend to his persistent Achilles injury.

Steve Smith will be leading the lines for Australia while Rohit Sharma will be running point for India. The biggest area of difference between the two sides have been the presence of the three all-rounders in the Indian echelons as Axar Patel, Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin have been instrumental in their exploits.

Australia will need someone to do a similar job if they are to throw a spanner in India’s celebrations and the possible names in the line-up that can be up for discussions when it comes to the all-round flair is that of a returning Cameron Green.

Venue Watch:

This is the changed venue after HPCA Stadium was deemed unplayable for a while and as things stand, this is just the third game in the stadium and out of the two fixtures played here, one has been won batting first while the other while batting second. The average first innings score is 353 while the average second innings score is 396. The third and the fourth innings has drastically dropped numbers with the third innings reading 214 while that final innings has 153 as the average score.

Head-to-head:

Matches played: 104

India: 32

Australia: 43

Match Details:

India vs Australia

Holkar Stadium, Indore

1st March, 2023

9:30 AM IST

Squads:

India:

Rohit Sharma (captain), KL Rahul, Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KS Bharat, Ishan Kishan, Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammad Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Umesh Yadav, Jaydev Unadkat, Suryakumar Yadav, Shreyas Iyer

Australia:

Usman Khawaja, Travis Head, Marnus Labuschagne, Steven Smith(c), Matt Renshaw, Peter Handscomb, Alex Carey(w), Nathan Lyon, Todd Murphy, Matthew Kuhnemann, Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Swepson, Cameron Green, Scott Boland, Lance Morris