A pensive Ricky Ponting during a practice session at the Kotla on Friday. Picture by Prem Singh

New Delhi: With the series levelled and the team looking in apple-pie order in all departments, India will have a clear edge over an injury-ravaged Australia in the third one-day International at the Kotla on Saturday.

While Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s team looked a confident lot after their thumping win in the last match in Nagpur, injuries continued to haunt the visitors as speedster Brett Lee, nursing an elbow injury, has been ruled out of the rest of the series.

Cricket Australia, Friday, decided to send Lee back home to consult a specialist as he was not responding well to the treatment.

All-rounder James Hopes too will miss the Kotla tie. Hopes is suffering from the hamstring injury he picked up during the first ODI in Vadodara. Wicket-keeper Tim Paine had also been ruled out of the series with a fractured finger.

Apart from the injuries, the bowling form of Ben Hilfenhaus and Mitchell Johnson has been a worrying factor for the Australian team. The duo gave away 158 runs in their 20 overs in the previous game, which might prompt captain Ricky Ponting to employ an extra spinner.

“Hope James will be fine for the Mohali match. We have our finger crossed,” said Ponting.

Dhoni, on the other hand, stressed on the momentum that India gained after the Nagpur tie. “Since we played very well in the last match and won, we should be able to keep up the momentum,” he said.

“We lost the first match because we didn’t bat and bowl well. But we took the positives from that match, like Praveen Kumar and Harbhajan Singh’s batting. We won the second match, bowling and batting much better while our fielding also looked much improved.

“But we have to start from scratch in every game. With two matches gone, now it has become a five-match series for us and though win brings in confidence, we have to start afresh,” he said.

The Indian captain himself struck a superlative century in the last match and there’s no doubt that the sell-out crowd at the Kotla on Saturday would come to the ground expecting Dhoni to come up with a repeat.

While batsmen like Virender Sahwag, Gautam Gambhir and Suresh Raina also played their parts well along with the skipper, and the bowlers, too, did a thorough job, the form of Sachin Tendulkar and Harbhajan remains the only cause of worry in the Indian camp. Neither Tendulkar, nor Harbhajan were impressive in the first two outings with the bat and the ball, respectively.

In the nets on Friday, Harbhajan was seen bowling to a single wicket with Sehwag facing him but the Indian captain said it was nothing exceptional and just a normal practice.

While all the Indian players sweated out in the two-hour net session, Ashish Nehra stayed away, playing football and doing stretches instead. When asked, the captain said Nehra wanted rest and so he did not take part in the net session.

The first two matches of the series produced lots of runs but the Kotla tie is unlikely to go the same way. The newly laid wicket at the Kotla remained low and slow throughout the Champions League T20 and it could behave similarly Saturday. Both the captains expressed concern and felt that the spinners might play an important role in deciding the fate of the match.

Among the Indians, players like Sehwag, Gambhir and Amit Mishra already had a taste of the wicket during the Champions League T20. Australia seem better placed in this aspect as at least half a dozen of their players had a feel of the Kotla track in the same tournament.

The match holds the key to the course of the series. The pitch may be a sore point but the teams can be expected to produce a quality encounter. The fans of Delhi deserve one!

Teams

India (from): Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma, Munaf Patel, Ashish Nehra, Praveen Kumar, Amit Mishra, Sudeep Tyagi, Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja.

Australia (from): Ricky Ponting, Michael Hussey, Doug Bollinger, Nathan Hauritz, Jon Holland, Ben Hilfenhaus, Shaun Marsh, Graham Manou, Peter Siddle, Adam Voges, Shane Watson, Mitchell Johnson and Cameron White.

Match starts: 2.30pm