The tri-series caravan has not so much pitched tent in Melbourne as made a fleeting appearance. Round two will kick off with old foes Australia and India locking horns at the intimidating Melbourne Cricket Ground on Sunday, the former looking to build on momentum and the latter seeking to find some momentum of their own.

After two wash-outs, India can't wait for Sunday to dawn. Though their final practice session before the game — on Saturday afternoon — had to be moved indoors as the rains accompanied them to the nets, Sunday is expected to be a sunny day, with the odd cloud, offering just the conditions India's batsmen so relish.

It's when the sun is beating down on their backs and divesting the surface of any juice or moisture that the Indians bat with freedom and authority. They did show at the Gabba, through Gautam Gambhir and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, that even in less than perfect conditions, they possess the wherewithal to come out trumps; whether they can do to Australia's bowlers what they did to Sri Lanka, however, is another matter altogether.

Led by Nathan Bracken, Australia turned in a command bowling performance on a slowish surface at the SCG on Friday night. Admittedly, Australia's cause was bolstered by a extraordinarily consistent display of poor shot-selection by Sri Lanka, but the confidence a thumping 128-run win generates can never be exaggerated.

Different challenge

The force is currently with the World champions, but Ricky Ponting's men will force themselves to believe that India offer a vastly different challenge as opposed to Sri Lanka. Complacency has never been an Aussie trait.

They have forever placed great emphasis on getting on a roll; India must play at the peak of their powers for the entire 100 overs if they hope to end up on the right side of the result.

That will take some doing, more so at a ground where India haven't defeated Australia in any international fixture since January 1986. For some strange reason, the MCG has been a bugbear, India oftentimes reserving their worst for a crowd that is, by a distance, the largest and most raucous in all of Australia. India's string of defeats at the hands of Australia is slightly difficult to explain. The pitch isn't the most lively; if anything, it is more Indian than Australian, yet India's batsmen have struggled to put the runs on the board that their bowlers can play with.

India have lost six of 10 one-dayers to Australia at the MCG, including the last five. Their Test record is equally miserable — seven losses and just two wins, the last of them dating back to February 1981. Already on this tour, their most forgettable outings have been here in the form of the 337-run thrashing in the Boxing Day Test, and the nine-wicket drubbing in the Twenty20 mismatch just over a week back. Sunday is as good a time as any to reverse that trend and prick the bubble of Aussie invincibility at another of the latter's favourite hunting grounds.

For that, Sachin Tendulkar will once again have to assume the leadership role. In recent times, India have shown that there is more to their batting than just the maestro; the younger lot, however, has fired only in fits and starts, lapsing into rabid inconsistency after the odd brilliant exhibition of extraordinary talent. Given the massive shoes they have stepped into, it is time for the likes of Gambhir and Robin Uthappa, no longer just babes in the woods, to come to the party on a more regular basis.

Slow pitch

India will toy long and hard with the idea of fielding a second specialist spinner in leggie Piyush Chawla, given the now traditional slowness of the MCG track and the biggish outfield. That will necessitate them to leave a batsman out, and Dhoni will probably refrain from taking that gamble, particularly given how early it is in the series and how important Sunday will be in the context of making a pitch for next month's best of three finals.

India will become the most prolific one-day nation in the world after Sunday’s toss. It will be India's 675th game, one more than Pakistan's existing record of 674 matches. Australia have played 671 games to date.
Teams (from):

Australia: Ricky Ponting (capt), Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden, Michael Clarke, Andrew Symonds, Mike Hussey, James Hopes, Brad Hogg, Brett Lee, Mitchell Johnson, Nathan Bracken, Brad Haddin.

India: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (capt), Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Rohit Sharma, Yuvraj Singh, Robin Uthappa, Irfan Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, S Sreesanth, Ishant Sharma, Piyush Chawla, Suresh Raina, Manoj Tiwary, Dinesh Kaarthick, Munaf Patel, Praveen Kumar.

Umpires: Rudi Koertzen (South Africa) and Simon Taufel. Third umpire: Bob Parry. Match referee: Jeff Crowe (New Zealand).