One Day International Series – Further injuries dent Australia’s tilt at Indian success

Australia’s tour of India continues to fight through a thick and heavily descending injury cloud with yet another player forced to fly home with the long season starting taking its toll.

Like a sick and twisted version of six degrees of separation, the Aussies players are falling like dominoes.

Moises Henriques is the latest of the bandaged bear brigade to be sent home after he tweaked a right hamstring in this week’s earlier win over India.

Henriques, who starred in NSW’ all conquering side who late last month were crowned Champions League Twenty20 champions, was drafted into the side to replace James Hopes who was also sent home with a hamstring injury, offered little in the way of a solid replacement scoring just six then coughing up 33 runs in his seven overs.

With his potentiality for greatness stunted, it could be a long time before we see Henriques in the national colours of canary yellow and green again with so many good all-rounders knocking on the door of the selectors.

Those all-rounders had best stop knocking in the middle of the night however as the selectors are threatening to trial lesser known names instead of the stock of ready to go talent.

Another to get an early trip home is Peter Siddle who is suffering from ‘stiffness’, a condition that has become all too common in the contemporary age of cricket.

The tourists, who squared the seven match series two-all on Monday with a rousing victory, are surprisingly chipper and competitive despite a casualty list not out of place for a B-grade horror movie.

The 24-run victory over India was a bizarre affair with six run outs and an Aussie batting collapse reminiscent of a house of cards.

Australia lost 5/23 and if not for a rousing bowling performance from Doug Bollinger (3/28 off 9 overs) and Shane Watson (3/29 off 7.4 overs), the visitors could have been looking down the barrel of an early series loss.

As things stand, India still look well placed to win the series unless Australia can continue digging themselves out of injury crisis, talent fatigue and batting collapses.

India will be well served by the return of Gautam Gambhir who will slot back into the top order to replace 20-year-old Virat Kohli however of concern is the failure of their batsmen at Mohali in the fourth match.

Eight batsmen reached double figures, Virender Sehwag (30) and Sachin Tendulkar (40) provided impact at the top while MS Dhoni (26) in the middle and Harbhajan Singh (31) in the lower order provided impact yet the hosts were unable to chase down the meagre total of 250.

The smart money is definitely with India to win simply on the fact that Australia are fielding a team, which is held together with a thinning piece of surgical tape.