India Look to Hit Back Against Dominant South Africa

South Africa head into the second ODI in Johannesburg on a wave of confidence here, having crushed the world’s top ranked side only two days ago.

After a solid thrashing in the Durban game, MS Dhoni and his men will hope to try and level the series.

With few problems in both batting and bowling departments, it will be interesting to see what changes Dhoni comes up with for the match.

The preceding loss would not have surprised too many Indian cricket fans considering the team’s well documented issues on batting pitches, however more is needed from lot.

Raina and Pathan struggled against the extra bounce, while Sharma seems to have no answer to extra seam movement- a very real issue against the likes of Steyn, Morkel and Parnell.

The track at the Wanderers is traditionally a bouncy one, so India would be safe in assuming a few short ones first up.

A lot has been mentioned of Dhoni`s comments earlier in the week underlining the lack of depth in the side.

He said: "Honestly speaking, these are the four-five fast bowlers we have got. We do not have many options to play with. So we have to back them to do well."

This clash is an important one for Yuvraj Singh who is struggling with form, and could very well be his final chance to impress the selectors prior to the announcement of the World Cup squad.

South Africa, on the other hand, will take on the visitors with a familiar sense of home-ground confidence that is unlikely to see any change in their playing XI.

India: (from)Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain/wk), Sachin Tendulkar, Murali Vijay, Yuvraj Singh, R Ashwin, Piyush Chawla, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Virat Kohli, Praveen Kumar, Ashish Nehra, Munaf Patel, Yusuf Pathan, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, S Sreesanth.

South Africa: (from)Graeme Smith (captain), Hashim Amla, Johan Botha, AB de Villiers (wk), Jean-Paul Duminy, Faf du Plessis, Imran Tahir, Colin Ingram, David Miller, Morne Morkel, Wayne Parnell, Robin Peterson, Dale Steyn, Lonwabo Tsotsobe.

For South Africa, Durban was as close to perfect as it gets.

Without Kallis the team seems to portray a rather long tail, however with a middle order of AB de Villiers and JP Duminy the scoreboard is sure to keep ticking along.

The host’s pace attack delivered in spectacular fashion in the opener, and against an Indian outfit that are clearly lacking in the short ball department, one would imagine that the bowling will be more of the same come the Wanderers.

Watch out for Morne Morkel up on the Highveld as his bowling has shown signs of maturity this summer. He is devastating at being able to extract generous bounce from short of a length, and he will be looking to give the Indian top order a once over.

Tendulkar is always once for an occasion and he will be looking to go big today. He is set to join Sanath Jayasuriya as the most capped ODI player in history here at 444 games.

Not surprisingly after the one-sided opener, South Africa is the daunting favorite.