Yuvraj, who has not played for India since the 2014 World T20 final, is back in the national squad after a strong performance in the domestic Vijay Hazare Trophy.
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Kohli, who came out to bat in the fifth over, smashed a sizzling 55-ball 90 including nine fours and two sixes to steady the innings for the visitors.
“And when you’re looking at trying to restrict his scoring, the way he’s so good with his wrists it means he can just get it into gaps”.
Australian captain Aaron Finch said it was near futile setting a field for Kohli, given the stroke player’s soft hands, supple wrists and twinkling feet.
Tait and Watson are back for Australia while Yuvraj, Raina and Nehra return for India.
The feisty batsmen neatly dispatched Australian bowler James Faulkner during the teams’ third ODI at the Melbourne Cricket Ground earlier in the series. India hold a 1-0 lead after winning by 37 runs in Adelaide.
Asked to bat, India got off to a flying start with in-form Rohit Sharma firing all cylinders to traumatise the opposition bowlers. It was on at the time but for me, it was just a bad shot, ” Smith added. Smith was caught by the Indian Test captain off Ravindra Jadeja’s bowling and Kohli immediately signalled something just as he was walking back to the pavilion.
“I really like playing here, would like to take the pitch to everywhere I go”. India could have turned the 4-1 result around in their favour but they were hit by some middle-order woes thanks to an inexperienced line-up and that proved to be their undoing.
Finch said the Australians had no one but themselves to blame.
The trio was well supported by spinners Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja.
A jubilant Kohli immediately ran across to his teammates, but was seen venting aloud and throwing his hands in an animated gesture at the batsman, clearly annoyed by something Smith had done during the course of the match.
The duo were both mic’d up and delivered first-hand commentary of the latter stages of the innings, with the pair adding 19 runs in that 18th over, including two sixes from Healy. “We didn’t help ourselves with our catching and it is something that we need to look at, two games in a row now in two different formats that it has let us down now”.
“In T20I, and in ODI cricket, if you don’t take wickets with the new ball, it puts so much pressure on the others because it is so hard to contain good batting line-ups on flat wickets through the middle overs”.
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Unlike the Kohli-Faulkner incident, in which stump microphones picked up the chatter, the Kohli-Smith dialogue was not audible.
