14:30 local
09:00 GMT
India (probable): 1 Sachin Tendulkar, 2 Virender Sehwag, 3 Gautam Gambhir, 4 Yuvraj Singh, 5 MS Dhoni (capt/wk), 6 Suresh Raina, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Harbhajan Singh, 9 Praveen Kumar, 10 Ishant Sharma, 11 Ashish Nehra.
Australia: (probable) 1 Shane Watson, 2 Shaun Marsh, 3 Ricky Ponting (capt), 4 Cameron White, 5 Michael Hussey, 6 Adam Voges/Moises Henriques, 7 Graham Manou (wk), 8 Mitchell Johnson, 9 Nathan Hauritz, 10 Peter Siddle, 11 Ben Hilfenhaus/Doug Bollinger.
With no injuries to speak of, India have no reason to alter their line-up.
The situation isn’t so clear-cut for Australia. Lee’s elbow injury has ended his series and Hopes remains on the sidelines. Australia’s sub-standard bowling effort in Nagpur could bring Moises Henriques and Doug Bollinger into the equation, with Ben Hilfenhaus especially vulnerable having leaked 83 runs on Wednesday. Ponting wasn’t happy with the team balance in Nagpur, which could mean a debut for Henriques, probably at the expense of Adam Voges. Graham Manou will replace the injured Paine but won’t take his batting position and is likely to slot in at No. 7.
Pitch and conditions
The quality of the Kotla pitch in Delhi was slammed during the Champions League Twenty20, when slow, low bounce made it mighty hard to score runs. For the ODI the pitch is expected to be a bit better, but not much. Batsmen will need to be extra judicious in protecting against straight balls due to the low bounce. In short, don’t expect a repeat of the 354 India posted in Nagpur.
