Australia had a strong start to their Border-Gavaskar Trophy campaign against India with a big win at Adelaide and that has prompted the hosts to go into the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne with an unchanged playing XI, hinted Kangaroo head coach Justin Langer.
Australians won the first Test convincingly on the third day itself after they were asked to chase a modest total of 90. Architects of the win were pacer Josh Hazlewood (5/8) and Pat Cummins (4/21), who broke the Indian backbone within 81 deliveries to bundle them at a lowly 36.
The team had some nagging issues among their batsmen and veteran David Warner is also ruled out for the Test. However, coach Langer hinted that the team will remain unchanged as he would have to be very courageous to mess with the winning combination.
"I'd be a pretty courageous man to change the XI for this Test match after the last one," Langer was quoted as saying by cricket.com.au.
"At this stage, unless something happens over the next few days – and things can happen in the world we live in – we'll go in with the same XI, I'd say."
Australia Test squad: Tim Paine (c), Joe Burns, Pat Cummins, Cameron Green, Marcus Harris, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Moises Henriques, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Michael Neser, James Pattinson, Will Pucovski, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Swepson, Matthew Wade, David Warner
India Test squad: Virat Kohli (c) (first Test only), Ajinkya Rahane (vice-captain), Rohit Sharma, Mayank Agarwal, Prithvi Shaw, KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Hanuma Vihari, Shubman Gill, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Rishabh Pant (wk), Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Navdeep Saini, Kuldeep Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammed Siraj
