A day in advance, a confident Australian team announced their playing XI for the Boxing Day Test at the MCG. The big plus for Australia is the fact that in-form Travis Head has been declared fit and he would feature in the all-important game. Out-of-form opener Nathan McSweeney makes way for young Sam Konstas. 

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In what was otherwise a leisurely Christmas Day optional training session, Head underwent a stringent fitness test consisting of running drills in sight of where Australian players’ families roamed on the MCG outfield.

But Cummins told reporters the left-hander, who also had a short net session, had ticked all the boxes and would be right to face India from Thursday.

‘Trav’s good to go, he’ll play’ – Cummins

“Trav’s good to go, he’ll play,” Australia’s skipper said. “He just kicked off some final things today and yesterday. But no worries about injury with Trav. He’ll go into the game fully fit.

“I don’t think you’ll see too much management of him throughout the game. He just kind of plays as is. Maybe around fielding, if he’s bit uncomfortable, we will (manage him), but he’s fully fit.”

Head would have been an enormous loss for the home side – he has more than double the runs of the next best-performed Australia batter in this series. 

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AUSTRALIA PLAYING XI

Australia: Pat Cummins (c), Sam Konstas, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith, Travis Head, Mitchell Marsh, Alex Carey, Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon, Scott Boland.

India (possible): Rohit Sharma (c), K.L. Rahul, Yashavsi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli , Rishabh Pant, Ravindra Jadeja, Nishant Kumar Reddy, Akash Deep, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj.

The Test match is set to start in under 24 hours and is going to be a humdinger with the series locked at 1-1.