Five matches into the 15th edition of the World Cup but it has not yet kicked off with all games being one-sided and sadly no crowd to see any of the matches which gave a sorry sight that is the World Cup happening that too in India.
But come Sunday, when hosts India clash with five-time champions Australia, it should be a full house as all tickets have been sold out and we should have a cracker of a game.
There is already drama before the match started with wonder boy Shubman Gill down with a fever and looks unlikely to play even though he has not been ruled out by head coach Rahul Dravid who said in the press conference that Gill is recovering well. But if Gill does not take the field, India will suffer a huge blow as he has been the stand-out player this year for Team India in the ODI format scoring 1,230 runs in 20 innings at a staggering average of 72.32 with five hundreds and five half centuries. Both Rohit Sharma and Gill have given good starts with the bat for India when opening the batting together.
Australia too will breathe a sigh of relief if Gill is not playing as in the last two ODIs, he had scored a hundred and 74 and looked at ease against all the Australian pace bowlers and took the Aussie spinners to the cleaners with ease. Moreover, Gill will also be missed as a fielder as he is excellent in the slip cordon having the hands of a bucket.
India does have pocket dynamo Ishan Kishan to replace Gill to partner Rohit and this will definitely test the character of the 25-year-old wicketkeeper-batsman. One advantage of having Kishan is that he is left-handed to negate Adam Zampa but for that, he needs to survive the Australian brutal pace attack first of Michell Starc, captain Pat Cummins, and Josh Hazelwood.
That the match is played in Chennai, India will play home boy Ravichandran Ashwin who has a good record against the Aussies and will be handy in spin-friendly conditions of Chennai. India had beaten Australia when they last met in the World Cup in their first game at the Oval, but Australia will have good memories of the last match they played at Chennai when they beat India to win the series. The India-Australia match is the right starter to kick off the World Cup just before the big game on October 14 between India and Pakistan and one hopes that the match goes to the wire to give this World Cup the right push.
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