Starc Confirmed In Place Of Stanlake While Place for Chahal Still a Mystery

Australia’s T20I campaign has been haunted by rains recently on a consistent basis. The one-off T20I against South Africa was reduced to a T10 affair.

The first game against India was reduced in terms of overs again while the Melbourne T20I was totally washed out and no result was reached there.

On the other hand Australia gained heavily from the rains in Melbourne as India lost a vital opportunity to level the series. Now both the parties can share the spoils in the series decider in Sydney.

At Gabba, Australia’s batting was mainly between Glenn Maxwell and Marcus Stoinis. At Melbourne, the Indian bowlers managed to return the blows before the rain interrupted.

Captain Aaron Finch scored a duck while Krunal Pandya took Maxwell’s wicket. It was fitting response as Maxwell had dispatched Krunal for huge runs just two nights earlier.

Khaleel Ahmed was once again a delight to watch as he delivered with his pace and variations. Now all the fans are praying is a few solid hours of dry weather.

Aaron Finch would love to return to form at Sydney before the onset of the Test series. India’s KL Rahul is currently slotted at No. 3 ahead of skipper Kohli.

This means that Rahul should not eat up deliveries. His 13 off 12 balls in the first T20I was a bit more in a hefty run chase with the world’s finest white-ball batsman behind.

Australia have replaced Billy Stanlake with pacer Mitchell Starc. Stanlake injured his ankle during the warmup ahead of the second T20I. D’Arcy Short has also struggled, but there are no specialist alternatives in his place at this moment.

The only debate for India will be with the position of Yuzvendra Chahal in the playing XI. With the success of Kuldeep Yadav, playing Chahal might be a tempting option.

The pitch at Sydney is a bit on the slower side. The city has experienced recent strong winds and dust storms. But the good news is that there is no forecast of rain on Sunday.

Team news:

Australia (probable): 1 Aaron Finch (capt), 2 D’arcy Short, 3 Chris Lynn, 4 Glenn Maxwell, 5 Marcus Stoinis, 6 Ben McDermott, 7 Alex Carey (wk), 8 Nathan Coulter-Nile/Mitchell Starc, 9 Andrew Tye, 10 Adam Zampa, 11 Jason Behrendorff

India (probable): 1 Rohit Sharma, 2 Shikhar Dhawan, 3 Virat Kohli (capt.), 4 KL Rahul, 5 Rishabh Pant (wk), 6 Dinesh Karthik, 7 Krunal Pandya, 8 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Jasprit Bumrah, 11 Khaleel Ahmed/Yuzvendra Chahal