Predicting India's playing XI for the 3rd ODI vs Australia

India has lost two successive ODIs and a series after a long time now. Even though the team played better than the first one in the second game, it was still not enough, as the batting unit failed to put up a challenging enough total on the board.

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The top-order failed yet another time, where skipper Gill looked for the while he was there, but he could not last more than nine balls and runs each. Then came along Virat Kohli and made a special record to his name as he bagged back-to-back ducks. Rohit struggled early on in the innings for quite a long while but did not give his wicket away.

Scratchy Rohit started looking good later on and brought up his 59th ODI half-century. Shreyas Iyer provided a good partnership with him and scored a half-century as well. This is the partnership that gave stability to India’s innings, but other than this pair, no other pair could add substantial runs. 

The batting unit has been struggling with runs in this series, but the batting order has been well-settled as well. As a result, there won't be much chopping and changing in it, with the same team going ahead for the third game as well.

However, the team has been playing three all-rounders in Axar Patel, Nitish Reddy and Washington Sundar, where some alterations can be made. Sundar has been bowling decently, but hasn’t made any impact with the bat, while Reddy has not made any significant contributions either. Either of these players can be benched to bring in Kuldeep Yadav in the next game.

The team’s bowling has been struggling with wicket-taking options as well, and so bringing in Kuldeep at such a point in time will help the team’s cause and can cover up to some extent the batting line-up’s failures. There does not seem to be any other changes in the playing XI for the third game.

Probable playing XI: Rohit Sharma, Shubhman Gill (c), Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul (wk), Axar Patel, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Harshit Rana, Kuldeep Yadav, Arshdeep Singh, Mohammad Siraj.

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