After winning the opening test at Adelaide by 31 runs, India will be keen to take a 2-0 lead when they square off against the hosts in Perth on Friday.
Out of the 4 matches played in the West Australian capital against India, the hosts have won three and lost one.
The first Test between the two sides at Perth was played in the year 1977 and the second in 1992 where the home team victorious on both occasions by a margin of two wickets and 300 runs respectively. India’s solitary win came here in 2008, when they triumphed by 72 runs, but in 2012, Australia thrashed the visitors by an innings and 37 runs.
The Men in Blue suffered 2 massive blows ahead of the test as ace spinner Ravichandran Ashwin and batsman Rohit Sharma were ruled out due to injuries.
Ashwin suffered a abdominal strain on his left side, while Rohit injured his back in the field Adelaide.
The 19 year old Prithvi Shaw, who sprained his ankle during the warm up game, has not recovered from his injury, meaning India will be going with their same opening combination of KL Rahul and Murali Vijay.
Hanuma Vihari, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Umesh Yadav have been included in the 13 man squad. Vihari is expected to replace Sharma at 6. Bhuvneshwar appears the most likely to replace Ashwin if India want to go with a four pronged seam attack.
Australian skipper Tim Paine has announced that they will field the same XI that did duty in Adelaide.
However the Aussies may consider positional changes- one among Usman Khawaja and Shaun Marsh could open the innings along with Marcus Harris, which will allow Aaron Finch, who looked out of sorts in Adelaide, to move down the order.
With the pitch expected to be “fiery”, the likes of Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins could be threatening. There have been concerns over Starc’s test bowling to top order batsmen in recent times (most of his wickets have come against the tail), with Mark Waugh publicly calling for the speedster to be dropped if he doesn’t perform in this test.
India’s playing for the second test.
M Vijay, KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli (c), Ajinkya Rahane, Hanuma Vihari/ Rohit Sharma , Rishabh Pant, Ravindra Jadeja/ Ravi Ashwin, Ishant Sharma, Mohammed Shami and Jasprit Bumrah,
Australia playing XI.
Aaron Finch, Marcus Harris, Usman Khawaja, Shaun Marsh, Peter Handscomb, Travis Head, Tim Paine (c), Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon and Josh Hazlewood