England Decides To Bat, Ishant Sharma Dropped
Jan 9, 2019 at 4:12 PM
Kicking off the long Test series on Indian soil, with Rajkot stadium marking its debut, England skipper called for the right side of the coin and decided to bat first to rip off the early batting advantage on day 1. With expert panel indicating everything for batsmen for first two days, England had no worries to go first. 19-year old will be making his debut in Test format to take the place of Ben Duckett, who have been pushed to number 4 position in place of Gary Ballance. 3 pacers/spinners will hold bowling mark for England.
On the other hand, Virat Kohli continued on the same track of going up with a 6:5 combination. Amit Mishra, who pouched 15 wickets in the ODI series against the Kiwis, has been included in the squad with regulars R. Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja. Interestingly, Ishant Sharma, who was making his comeback from an injury, has not been included in playing XI.
The first session of the game will tell much about conditions and pitch here at Rajkot.
India Playing XI: Murali Vijay, Gautam Gambhir, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli(c), Ajinkya Rahane, Wriddhiman Saha(w), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Amit Mishra, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav
England Playing XI: Alastair Cook(c), Haseeb Hameed, Joe Root, Ben Duckett, Ben Stokes, Jonny Bairstow(w), Moeen Ali, Chris Woakes, Adil Rashid, Stuart Broad, Zafar Ansari