Aust still on ODI roll in India: Bailey

Skipper George Bailey is confident his Australian team’s momentum has survived the two abandoned matches to carry into Wednesday’s game six of the high-scoring ODI series against India in Nagpur.

Australia, who lead the best-of-seven series 2-1 with two games to go, were in scorching form before rain washed out games four and five in Ranchi and Cuttack.

But Bailey believes there’s residual energy from James Faulkner’s match-winning blitz in game three in Mohali and the recovery mission Bailey himself put on with Glenn Maxwell in Ranchi.

“I don’t think we’ve lost anything,” Bailey told AAP.

“(The weather) was out of our control.”

With India facing a sudden-death match, a prospect seen as unthinkable in their homeland when heavy favourites before the series started, Bailey is clear on what his team is expecting.

“I expect them to bring exactly the same as what they’ve been coming with all series,” he said.

“You can’t try any harder than what guys have been trying.

“I would expect the No.1 team in the world to play as the No.1 team in the world do – very hard.”

Offspinner Xavier Doherty said Australia must take a winner-takes-all attitude into Wednesday, and not allow themselves to think about game seven in Bangalore as a fall-back option.

“We don’t want to save it until the last game to make it sudden-death,” Doherty said. “We want to wrap it up this game.

“You’d rather be in our position than theirs.

“There’s probably a fraction more pressure on them but it’s whoever comes out better on the day will take that advantage going into the last game.

“Hopefully it’s us with a series win.”

Every wicket in the series so far has proven essentially a batsman’s paradise and Bailey said, while another fairly flat deck looked on offer, he was optimistic there was enough to give his bowlers something to work with.

“It looked pretty good to bat on. But certainly the nets had a bit of bounce,” Bailey said.

“Probably a bit more bounce than we’ve had at other grounds. That was good to see.”

Wicketkeeper Brad Haddin said Australia’s bowlers had shown a willingness to extract life from every wicket they’d encountered so far and he expected the same on Wednesday against the high-class and potent India batting line-up.

“I think (fast bowler) Mitch (Johnson) has shown that you can get something out of it,” he told AAP.

“You’ve just got to make sure you’re hitting the right areas and asking enough questions to get the result.

“From that point of view we’ll find something out of it.

“It depends whether you bowl cutters, whether you hit the wicket hard, or bowl into the wicket or skid it.”

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