Melbourne: Rohit Sharma is highly likely to open for India against Australia in the Boxing Day Test that begins on Thursday. That would mean KL Rahul will drop to the No.3 slot in the batting order. The Indian captain played as a middle-order batter in the Adelaide and Brisbane Tests but could well return to top of the order for the fourth Test.
Rohit was asked about the batting order for the MCG Test during the pre-match press-conference but the captain, unlike his straight talk before the Adelaide game, didn’t reveal anything.

“Let’s not worry about who bats where. Something that we need to figure and not something I would be discussing here. We will do what is best for the team,” Rohit had said on Tuesday.
There was nothing given away but the statement lacked the clarity and conviction which was there when he revealed in Adelaide that India would persist with Rahul at top of the order. For Rohit, batting in the middle order was the difficult thing to do but the captain was ready to take one for the team as the pair of Jaiswal and Rahul did a phenomenal job in the series opener.
“How I came to that decision of batting down the order is because we want results, we want success,” Rohit said in Adelaide.
“And those two guys at the top – just looking at this one Test match – they batted brilliantly. I was at home with my newborn in my arms and I was watching how KL batted. It was brilliant to watch, to be honest.”And I felt that there’s no need to change that now. Maybe in the future things will be different, I don’t know. So based on what has happened and what KL has shown outside of India, he probably deserves that place at this point,” he further explained.

Rohit had lengthy hits during the team’s training sessions at the MCG and while he was hit on the left knee on December 22, the right-hander didn’t show any discomfort while batting yesterday. He faced a mix of pace and spin in the side’s first two training sessions in Melbourne but it was a heavy dose of side-arm for the final session where a lot of emphasis was given to leaving deliveries on length, and outside off stump.

Two spinners?
Melbourne weather has a lot of tricks up its sleeve and they have been on display ever since the team landed here. There have been showers, heavy wind, nippy mornings and very harsh afternoons. The forecast for the opening day is not very pleasant either and that could well force the Indian think tank to look towards an extra spinner for the upcoming Test.
The pitch, which has enough grass, will definitely bake under the harsh sun and that has brought Washington Sundar back into discussions but the big question is at the cost of who? If Rohit opens and KL drops to No.3 then where does Gill bat? And what wrong has he done to be dropped from the side after one bad outing in Brisbane. Yes, consistent runs haven’t come but he looked good in Adelaide.
Similarly, even Nitish Reddy has done what was expected from him and has been India’s second best batter in the series. So if they do look towards the extra spinner, one of Reddy or Gill could well sit out.

Pat Cummins expects spin and Nathan Lyon to play a role at the MCG but Rohit continued to keep cards close to his chest when he was asked on the possibility of playing an extra spinner.
“Whatever we have to do to make the best possible XI in these conditions, we will do that — whether that is playing an extra spinner or not,” Rohit said on Tuesday.
The series is delicately placed at 1-1 and it’s all to play for at the iconic MCG where over 2,50,000 are expected to be in the stands for the next five days. India have continued to chop and change ever since they have landed on Australian soil and the trend is likely to continue for the crucial fixture which gets underway tomorrow.