Chennai: India and England both made two changes to their respective playing XIs as captain Suryakumar Yadav won the toss and elected to bowl first in the second T20I at the MA Chidambaram Stadium here on Saturday. India are leading the five-match T20I series 1-0.
Local boy Washington Sundar, and Dhruv Jurel replaced the injured duo of Nitish Kumar Reddy and Rinku Singh in India’s playing eleven. While Reddy is unavailable for the rest of the series due to a side strain, Rinku is out for two games because of a lower back spasm picked while fielding in the T20I series opener, which India won by seven wickets in Kolkata.
“Looks like a good track, there was a little bit of dew yesterday, hoping the wicket will be better in the evening. It looks good, but it looks hard, hope it stays the same. We want to stick to the basics and have the same approach we had in the last game in all the departments. Really looking forward to the game. Fielding is the one thing which brings everyone together, brings a lot of energy and positivity,” said Suryakumar.
For England, Jamie Smith is making his T20I debut after Jacob Bethell is out due to illness, while Brydon Carse comes in for Gus Atkinson. “Would have wanted to bowl first, but do the same and do better. Guys are relaxed and looking forward to today. We want to be more aggressive. We’ll assess conditions quickly and communicate that,” said captain Jos Buttler.
Playing XIs:
India: Sanju Samson (wk), Abhishek Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav (c), Tilak Varma, Hardik Pandya, Washington Sundar, Dhruv Jurel, Axar Patel, Ravi Bishnoi, Arshdeep Singh and Varun Chakravarthy
England: Ben Duckett, Philip Salt (wk), Jos Buttler (c), Harry Brook, Liam Livingstone, Jamie Smith, Jamie Overton, Brydon Carse, Jofra Archer, Adil Rashid, and Mark Wood
