India will go into the third one-dayer believing that they have got the momentum to win this series. It was the Harbhajan Singh-Praveen Kumar partnership that gave them the belief that they can beat the Australians and then M.S. Dhoni played an incredible innings to help level the series.
Any sport is about winning the big moments and to do that, the small ones have to be done well too for that keeps the player or the team in the game.
The Harbhajan-Praveen partnership at Vadodara may have just fallen short of taking India to a famous win but it made the players look at themselves and say that if only some of them had shown the same spirit, then victory would have been theirs. Here again, if the defeat margin had been bigger than it was, the psychological advantage would have been with Australia. The visitors were rattled by the partnership and that's why it would have been terrific if India had not allowed the last Australian wicket to flourish a bit in the second ODI and won by a margin of over 100 runs.
If India are hoping to be number one and more importantly stay as number one, then they have to be merciless.
{{/usCountry}}If India are hoping to be number one and more importantly stay as number one, then they have to be merciless.
{{/usCountry}}No praise can be too high for the curator at Nagpur who gave a pitch that was ideal for cricket. The Vadodara pitch, though spinning a bit more, was also a good one to bat on. It will be interesting to see how the Kotla pitch behaves and both teams will be hoping that their captains win the toss.