After less than a month two bell weather team in world cricket, India and Australia will be ready to face it off against each other. Although India is still playing T20 cricket in New Zealand, Australia has already announced its 16 member squad for the tour of India in which only limited overs matches will be played. The Australian will play two T20 matches and five ODIs against the hosts. No Test matches have been scheduled for this tour and the two T20 matches will be played beginning 24th of February at Bangalore.
We know that the Indian team had recently toured Australia and they had a very successful tour winning both the Test match series and the ODI series. The Australians will plan to try out their spin bowlers on the pitches of the sub-continent during this tour. However, one of their main fast bowlers, Mitchell Starc has not been named in the squad as he is nursing an injury and the Australian management want him to recover fully before the World Cup. Josh Hazelwood too has been deemed injured and will not accompany the contingent to India. That could be good news for the Indian cricket fans. Apart from this, Peter Seidel and Mitchel Marsh are also not named in the squad. Nathan Lyon, Cane Richardson and Ashton Turner have been included
Head to Head in India-
If we have a look at the games played between the two teams in India over the last ten years, Australia has played five T20 matches against India. Of those India claimed victory in four matches while Australia has won one. Even in the whole Indian sub-continent, the two teams have met a total of seven times of which India has won five matches. India comes out looking stronger in the subcontinent in these formats of cricket. Although the Men in Blue are hard to overcome in their home conditions, we cannot rule out an Australian victory this time. Cricket is unpredictable as we all know and in the shorter formats of the game any team can upturn the apple cart of the best teams if they click on that day.
The absence of Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood make the Australian contingent look weaker. They would be missing Steve Smith and David Warner on a tour like this. The two have been banned from playing International cricket but will be back in action in time for the World Cup.
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