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A depleted Australia will take on a confident England in the fourth of the ODIs in the Carlton tri-series at Hobart and this game could serve up an excellent opportunity for the visitors to take another step to their resurgence. You can follow the live scores of this match 2:20pm AEDT.
After a poor start to the competition, when they went down to Australia in their first leg game and conceded a bonus point to go with that, England fought back strongly in their next match against India.
On a track that afforded enough movement and bounce to stun the exhausted-looking Indians, England bowled them out for 153 and chased that target down for the loss of just Moeen Ali’s wicket. Needless to say they helped themselves to a bonus point too to move up to five points from two matches.
What will also add to England’s confidence is they go into the game with their opponents in bit of a tizzy over their fitness issues.
As if the absence of Michael Clarke, Mitchell Johnson and Josh Hazlewood wasn’t enough, Australia have also lost George Bailey to a suspension, David Warner to rest and Shane Watson to another hamstring issue.
Incidentally, we have already seen how many of those hamstrings have gone haywire in the last few months for Australia, which will be a bit of a worry for the think-tank. But I digress.
What the loss of those last three aforementioned players has done is to push the selectors into bringing in three players, who haven’t been named in the 2015 World Cup squad.
Shaun Marsh will replace David Warner at the top, Cameron White will shuttle into the middle-order in place of George Bailey while Moises Henriques will be a like-for-like replacement for Watson.
On paper it looks fine but when you lose three of your key batsmen – four, including Clarke – then it could punch some serious holes in your batting.
Australia will hope to take heart from their showing in the 2009 ODI series in India, in which they kept losing players to injuries and at one time almost played with a second-string XI but came up trumps in the series.
Of course, what should help is that White is coming off an excellent Matador BBQs season and Marsh will have the confidence from his showing in the Tests against India rub on to the ODIs.
And with Aaron Finch showing signs of regaining his batting form at the top of the order and Mitchell Starc getting them to hoop off the right lengths and perfect channels, and on a consistent basis with the white ball, the side still has a few potential match-winners in their line-up.
England brought in James Anderson in the previous match in place of Chris Jordan and the champion fast bowler came back strongly to pick up four wickets against India. With Steven Finn exhibiting a penchant to become ‘selectable’ yet again, the only question as far as their bowling England need to answer is whether they need to pick up a frontline spinner for this game.
James Tredwell hasn’t played any game this series and with Moeen Ali coming good with the ball and Joe Root as a back-up spinner in the side, it looks unlikely England will want to change much. Of course, a lot depends on how the pitch will look just before the start of play on Friday.
Speaking of the pitch, if recent records are anything to go with, this looks to be a pretty high-scoring venue, with scores of 281 and 321 being chased down by teams over the last three games.
Despite the nine-wicket win, the England batting could still get a tad fragile, and that’s probably why they could look to chase down a target instead of batting first.
You can follow the live scores of this fourth ODI between Australia and England from 2.20 pm local time on Friday and post your comments in the section below.
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