Faced with the prospect of a humiliating 0-3 series whitewash, a desperate India would be aiming to bounce back to winning ways against an unrelenting South Africa in the third and final Test, starting in Johannesburg, on Wednesday.
Images from the 1st T20I match played at Eden Gardens in Kolkata on Sunday
India gets new face in pace attack
Delhi's performance at home is woeful, but having registered a win after two consecutive losses at the Kotla, the Shreyas Iyer-led outfit is high on confidence.
CSK captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni missed the game against SRH due to a stiff back but is likely to be back for Sunday's match against Virat Kohli-led RCB.
West Indies pace legend Courtney Walsh feels that Indian speedster Ishant Sharma needs to work harder in the nets in order to iron out his flaws and achieve consistency.
Sanju Samson replaced Virat Kohli for the three-match T20I series against Bangladesh, while Mumbai all-rounder Shivam Dube earned his maiden call-up to the Indian team.
The Indian bowling was a pleasant surprise in the recent World Cup but a bigger pool of genuine fast bowlers and spinners needs to be created for the team to be a consistent force in the future, feels the legendary Erapalli Prasanna.
'We've learnt to stand up - it all started from Dada's (Sourav Ganguly) team'
Factbox on Saturday's World Cup Pool B match between India and United Arab Emirates.
Please fill in your choices and help the Indian selectors make up their mind!
The Kolkata crowd showed all their love for Tendulkar by chanting 'Sachin Sachin', taking the master blaster back to his playing days.
India will be hoping to put up an improved bowling show with their front line pacers Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah back in action for the third ODI
Virat Kohli and Indian cricket remained an enduring love story and Sourav Ganguly held out promise for a path-breaking reign off the field in a year during which the country finally embraced pink ball Tests. There were the heartbreaks, the biggest one being a World Cup semi-final exit, and not to forget the anxious wait on what Mahendra Singh Dhoni might do next after being on a sabbatical for half the year.
Having decimated the opposition with clinical precision in all four matches, India will be aiming to complete a clean sweep when they take on a struggling Sri Lanka in the fifth and final cricket one-dayer in Ranchi on Sunday.
Islam compared the Indian pace attack to the lethal West Indian fast bowlers of the 1970s and 1980s.
Virat Kohli held centrestage with a delightful unbeaten 85 after a collective bowling effort as India cruised to an easy six-wicket victory over New Zealand taking a 1-0 lead in the five-match ODI series in Dharamsala on Sunday. After bowling out New Zealand for 190 in 43.5 overs, India reached the target in a mere 33.1 overs in a match that turned out to be thoroughly one-sided.
Weakened by the departure of Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes, Rajasthan Royals will have their task cut out when they lock horns with a resurgent Royal Challengers Bangalore in the Indian Premier League match in Jaipur on Saturday.
With 14 required off the last over, Umesh Yadav was hit for a boundary each by Jhye Richardson and Pat Cummins as Australia reached the target of 127 off the last delivery of the match.
Having found some light at the end of the tunnel, Royal Challengers Bangalore will be keen to expose the chinks in Kings XI Punjab's armoury during their must-win IPL encounter in Indore on Monday.
Bharat Arun is focussed on his next goal -- preparing the talented back-up pacers keeping an eye on the 2019 World Cup in England.
Before the two teams face off in a much-anticipated four-Test series starting on December 17, Australia A are scheduled to play two three-day tour games against India A, which features Test specialists.
A series win in Australia will certainly put Kohli on a higher pedestal even though the quality of the home team's batting line-up suffered adversely due to the bans of former skipper Steve Smith and his deputy David Warner.
In-form skipper Virat Kohli (64) and teenage prodigy Prithvi Shaw (66) were among the five Indian batsmen who struck fifties before the visitors were bowled out for 358 on the second day of the rain-hit practice game against Cricket Australia XI in Sydney.
Former skipper Allan Border feels the Australian pace battery will have the advantage of learning from the mistakes of Indian seamers, who bowled a 'little bit short' on the opening day of second Test.
Abhimanyu Mithun claimed a third five-for of the season as Vidarbha collapsed for 185 before Karnataka were left reeling at 36 for three on the opening day of their Ranji Trophy semi-final in Kolkata.
A keen contest is on the cards as Royal Challengers Bangalore and Rajasthan Royals cross swords in the Indian Premier League (IPL) in Bengaluru, on Sunday.
Umesh Sharma (40) was the head of emergency medicine department of the premier hospital in south Delhi.
Virat is No 1. Rohit is no 2, but guess who are Nos 3, 4, 5!
India would look to continue their ruthless streak
A round-up of Ranji matches played on Friday
With the series already in pocket, the Indian team management has decided to rest senior batsman Suresh Raina for the fifth and final ODI in Ranchi on Sunday.
Kohli trails Smith by 26 points and will have to produce a string of strong performances to leapfrog the Australian.
India made a strong reply to England's first-innings total of 477 after half-centuries by debutant Liam Dawson and number nine Adil Rashid underlined the tourists' batting depth in the fifth and final Test on Saturday. - Scorecard: India claimed three wickets on the second morning but the 108-run partnership between Dawson and Rashid in a productive second session for the touring side frustrated the hosts.
The odds are in favour of table toppers Kolkata Knight Riders as they square off against defending champions Mumbai Indians, experiencing a campaign that is oscillating between high and low, in a potentially exciting Indian Premier League contest in Mumbai, on Thursday.
England's lower-order gave India a taste of their own medicine on a benign Chepauk track racking up a commendable 477 in their first innings on the second day of the fifth and final cricket Test in Chennai.
Ravindra Jadeja did the star turn with a five-wicket haul, after Ajinkya Rahane's brilliant century, as India took control of the fourth Test against South Africa by taking a commanding 213-run lead on the second day at the Feroz Shah Kotla, in Delhi, on Friday.
The Indian batting legend reckons the pressure is now on Australia.
Skipper Gautam Gambhir led from the front with two half-centuries in the initial phase and when he failed to contribute, Robin Uthappa and Manish Pandey have stepped up to do the bulk of scoring.
Battered and bruised after four successive defeats, India will make a last-gasp effort to avoid the embarrassment of being whitewashed by an unrelenting Australia when the two sides clash in the fifth and final One-Day International in Sydney, on Saturday.
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