A rudderless India will be looking to shrug off two successive defeats as well as the loss of skipper Sourav Ganguly when they take on a pumped-up Pakistan in the crucial fifth cricket One-Day International at the Green Park stadium in Kanpur on Friday.
With the six-match series tantalisingly poised at 2-2, both teams are looking to take an unassailable lead in what promises to be another nail-biting contest between the arch-rivals.
India have not won a one-day series at home in the last five years, except for the one against Zimbabwe in 2000-01.
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Their sequence of defeats include losses to Australia in 2001, the West Indies in 2002-03, the TVS Cup tri-series in 2003-04, which was won by Australia, and the 3-3 tie with England in 2001-02.
Their last series win came against the late Hansie Cronje's South Africa in 2000 when, ironically, Ganguly took over as captain from Sachin Tendulkar.
But Chris Broad might have done the Indians a favour with his six-match ban on their skipper.
Ganguly's form has run into rough weather and the batsman considered to have one of the best timing in shots and hand-eye coordination had shown no immediate signs of recovering it.
Ganguly's struggle in putting bat to ball, combined with Tendulkar's cramps, saw the run-rate briefly dip in the Ahmedabad one-dayer. And given the fact that Pakistan eked out a last-ball win, one could not help but wonder if few more runs from an in-form Ganguly could have sprung a different result.
His sitting out will now open up new vistas for India. Not only promotions for Rahul Dravid, Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif in the batting order but also the inclusion of an extra bowler, that is if the team decides to do away with the seven batsmen theory.
The Indians should thank Mahendra Singh Dhoni for providing them a chance to include that one extra bowler. The 23-year old wicketkeeper-batsman from Jharkhand has been a revelation and with the Pakistanis yet to find chinks in his armour, he could be on song in the next two matches as well.
Tendulkar answered his critics with a sublime knock in the last match. His knock was special, not so much for his aggression as for the way he took the initiative in maintaining the tempo after the fall of opening partner Virender Sehwag.
Dravid has been in good knick in producing quick runs in the closing stages, and Yuvraj Singh being among runs should be a big relief for the team's think-tank. Only Kaif has not spent enough time at the crease but coming in one place higher up should address that situation.
The Green Park wicket looks, although not an altogether deteriorating track, as if it will help spinners in the second innings.
"We have tried to make a sporting wicket. It will help the team batting first. Experienced bowlers can exploit the foot marks (in the latter half of the match)," pitch in-charge Shivkumar said.
That would mean bucking the trend of high scoring games in the six-match series. The highest score on this track has been 269, India's winning total against England in 2002.
The return of Anil Kumble could then not have been better timed. With Harbhajan Singh suffering a side strain and Irfan Pathan out, the Karnataka leg-spinner will carry a huge burden. He produced a workhorse performance in the last match played here, the South Africa Test in November. Dravid and Co. will look forward to a similar effort from him.
Pakistan on the other hand would thank the less humid atmosphere of Kanpur, which should be relatively less warm than the coastal venues of Kochi and Visakhapatnam.
Captain Inzamam-ul Haq displayed his trademark coolness to deny the Indians an honourable tie in the last match.
He would be smiling that his batting big guns have been firing on full cylinders but worried that the bowlers and the fielders have been a bit ragged.
With the Kanpur pitch promising a humdinger, bowlers with level heads will win the match.
Teams (from):
India: Rahul Dravid (captain), Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh, Mohammad Kaif, Dinesh Mongia, Sridharan Sriram, Harbhajan Singh, Anil Kumble,
Zaheer Khan, Laxmipathy Balaji, Murali Kartik, Ajit Agarkar and Ashish Nehra.
Pakistan: Inzamam-ul Haq (captain), Younis Khan, Salman Butt, Shahid Afridi, Abdul Razzaq, Shoaib Malik, Yousuf Youhana, Kamran Akmal, Danish Kaneria, Rana Naved-ul Hasan, Mohammad Sami, Arshad Khan, Rao Iftekhar Anjum, Shahid Nazir, Asim Kamal and Mohd Hafeez.
Umpires: Rudi Koertzen (SA) and K Hariharan (Ind).
Third umpire: I Shivram (Ind).
Match Referee: Chris Broad (Eng).
