Southampton: India captain Rohit Sharma won the toss and opted to bat first against England in the first T20I of the three-match series, here on Thursday.
Left-arm pacer Arshdeep Singh is making his India debut from this game and skipper Rohit called him an exciting prospect.
“We are gonna bat first. Looks like a good pitch, decent ground to play. Good pitch, sun is out, better thing to bat first. Recovered pretty well, had a couple of hits before getting into this game. Looking forward to the game as well,” said Rohit at the toss.
“We know the scheduling, we have to have the understanding, players will be swapped every now and then. You can create your bench strength as well, a lot of opportunities for guys to come out and play. Exciting times, these guys have been here for a while playing in Ireland and played a couple of games here as well. We are making him (Arshdeep) play.
There were a few choices for us, the other guys will have their time. Arshdeep has done well in the IPL, looks an exciting prospect,” he added.
On the other hand, Jos Buttler is leading England for the first time as a full time captain and he called it a great honour.
“Very proud day, great honour to get to captain your country. I’m looking forward to the challenges ahead. Eoin has been a fantastic captain for a very long time, he has left the team in a great place and now the pressure is on to keep it moving forward,” said Buttler.
“The Test team has been fantastic to watch. Hopefully we can ride that momentum as well. Gleeson, Willey and Salt miss out. We have got a couple of all-rounders in Moeen Ali and Liam Livingstone, they give us a lot of options with both ball and bat,” he added.
Playing XI:
England: Jason Roy, Jos Buttler(w/c), Dawid Malan, Moeen Ali, Liam Livingstone, Harry Brook, Sam Curran, Chris Jordan, Tymal Mills, Reece Topley, Matthew Parkinson
India : Rohit Sharma(c), Ishan Kishan, Deepak Hooda, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Dinesh Karthik(w), Axar Patel, Harshal Patel, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Arshdeep Singh, Yuzvendra Chahal
(IANS)
