India have pride to play for in last ODI against Australia

Mumbai, Oct 16 (UNI) India will have only pride and something to prove to the Australians and their fans that they can compete against the World champions when they take on the visitors in the day-night seventh and last one-dayer, which will be played at the Wankhede stadium here tomorrow.

With Australia already having proved their superiority over the Indians having already won the seven match series 4-1 for the Future Cup, the last one-day international has lost the competitive zing as India would try and redeem themselves and get back some confidence, which has been severely dented by the Australians.

India, though the series has been lost will have a lot of play for as a win here tomorrow would bring back some morale for the home series against Pakistan beginning at the end of this month and the tour down under in December.

This series had been hyped up as a battle between the two World champions - Australia are the ODI World Cup winners and India the Twenty20 kings- but the seven-match series turned out to be thoroughly one-sided with Ricky Ponting's team emerging head and shoulders above the hosts.

The Indians would also been hoping to put up a good show at this stadium which would be last here in its present form. The stadium is going to be demolished and a new modern stadium is to be built with the 2011 World Cup scheduled to be played at this venue.

The Indians would need to improve in all departments of the game and would have to take some harsh decisions with the series already in Australia's bag. The major headache for the Indians would be the form of Rahul Dravid and though captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has stated that Dravid's form is not that much of a worry and the class batsman that he is, he would come good very soon. However, with youngster like Rohit Sharma and S Badrinath waiting in the wings the pressure must be building up on India's most technically accomplished batsman.

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