A worn-out Mitchell Johnson is no certainty to return for Australia as the tourists fight to close out the seven-match one-day series with a victory over India in the remote eastern city of Guwahati.

The tourists, who admitted to a collective poor night's sleep on their arrival in the capital of the state of Assam, will also consider Victorian allrounder Andrew McDonald and possibly uncapped paceman Burt Cockley.

Australian captain Ricky Ponting said Johnson was one of a handful of players nursing sore bodies, despite his resting from the fourth match in Hyderabad, and this meant both McDonald and Cockley were a chance of playing.

"We'll see how (Johnson) is, a lot of the guys haven't had the best sleeps last night to tell the truth, me being one of them, so we'll see how today goes and see how stiff and sore a few of the boys are," Ponting said on Saturday.

"Macca (McDonald) has been over here with the Champions League and did a really good job for Victoria.

"His style of bowling on this sort of wicket would be very good, stump to stump and taking pace off the ball all the time, that's what you need on the slower, lower types of wickets. He's been in good batting form too, getting a hundred in the Shield game and then 60-odd in the one dayer just before he left.

"Burt hasn't played a lot of late, but the last one day game he played he got 4-39 on a pretty low, slow North Sydney wicket.

"Both the guys who've come in will do well in these sorts of conditions."

Though the Guwahati groundsman has predicted a pitch ripe for another score of 300-plus, Ponting was expecting something more in keeping with the ground's stingy history - only three totals of more than 240 in 12 matches.

While hesitant to label the series a success before it was over, Ponting said he was proud of how the team had fought.

"We've been very, very competitive, as we have been from the start of losing all our great players 12-18-24 months ago," he said.

"We've remained competitive and quite often just stumbled a little bit at the bigger-type moments.

"We haven't done that this series so far, we've managed to find a way to win.

"Obviously I'll be a lot more happy if we happen to win the series but I'm pretty happy with the way we've stuck at it with all the adversity we've faced over the last few weeks."

Squads

INDIA: MS Dhoni (capt), Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Virat Kohli, Ravindra Jadeja, Harbhajan Singh, Ashish Nehra, Munaf Patel, Sudeep Tyagi, Praveen Kumar, Ishant Sharma, Amit Mishra.

AUSTRALIA: Ricky Ponting (capt), Shaun Marsh, Shane Watson, Michael Hussey, Adam Voges, Cameron White, Andrew McDonald, Graham Manou, Mitchell Johnson, Nathan Hauritz, Clint McKay, Jon Holland, Ben Hilfenhaus, Doug Bollinger, Burt Cockley.