Rather than wearing the orange bib of a drinks waiter that he accepted without rancour when Clarke was fit for last year’s World Cup, Bailey’s place in the Australian ODI middle order is now beyond question. Concerning the batting, India have only carried five specialists to Australia so that suggests that either Manish Pandey, one ODI old, or the uncapped Gurkeerat Singh slot in at No 6 what with MS Dhoni likely to bat up a spot with Suresh Raina dropped. “It’s very strong. We’re both two very passionate teams”. He played neatly in the post-Ashes series in England that was the 50-over side’s most recent assignment. “I haven’t played a lot of cricket over the last couple of years”, Paris told a news conference on Saturday.
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“Any cricket at a high level, whether it is Test cricket, Big Bash cricket or domestic cricket, I think you are up to speed with the game anyway, so that’s not a huge change to me”.
Meanwhile, in the ICC Player Rankings for ODI batsmen, India boast of three batsmen in the top 10, while Australia have only Glenn Maxwell in 10th position. Now, 25 years later, they will hope to win the first bilateral series, too.
“We had a great World Cup, we had a great couple of years leading into it. So, I think we deserve that tag and there is no reason why there shouldn’t be a big build-up and such excitement around our team”, he said. If I get to play, it would be fantastic.
Further, he added, “I will try to get used to the current condidtions”.
The teams have faced off in Perth only thrice before, with Australia winning twice, but Finch feels the wicket at Perth has changed recently and that the Indians will not face the problems as they previously did with the bounce and pace.
“They weren’t much fun to face in the nets (on Sunday)”.
Instead of getting on with scoring quick runs, Dhoni chose to play it slow. “While I’d love to continue playing and finish out the season with the Renegades, I wouldn’t give up playing cricket for Australia for anything”.
Paris has the height to extract good bounce and worry the Indian batsmen on the WACA surface, but swing is a key weapon for him, and he knows what works best for him is not always digging it in too short.
Rohit, whose first tour Down Under was way back in 2008 when he batted alongside Sachin Tendulkar and scored a patient half-century in an all-important CB series final, made two more visits here, the last being the 2015 World Cup. “I’m not a selector but we can have good conversations and I will have an opinion on the make-up of the team”, he said.
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“The amount of support that all the teams around the world had, people travelling from all around the world to watch a one-day tournament, I think was pretty special”.
