Rajkot: Pacer Mohammed Shami returns to international cricket after 14 months as India won the toss and elected to bowl first against England in the third T20I, here at the Niranjan Shah Stadium on Tuesday.
Shami replaced fellow pacer Arshdeep Singh, who has been rested for the match. India will look to seal the five-match series with a win here after taking a 2-0 lead in Chennai courtesy of Tilak Varma’s unbeaten 72.
Indian captain Suryakumar Yadav said, “We will bowl first, looks nice and hard, don’t think it will change later as well. Rajkot has always been a good track, sure it will be a sporting one. We wanted to play a different brand of cricket but at the same time you need to understand the situation and he (Tilak) bailed the side out. We’ll look at it as a 3 game series from here, boys are charged up. Arshdeep is resting, Shami comes in.”
England captain Jos Buttler said, “Looks a really good surface, looking forward to batting. We would’ve chased as well. Looks a good wicket, guys have had a good practice yesterday and we’re excited for the match. Was a really good game of cricket, we fought really hard and pushed them all the way. We need to play really well tonight. We know how well India play, they’re a strong team. We need a good total to defend. Same team but Jamie Smith will keep wickets, Salt has got a little stiff calf.”
Playing XIs:
England: Philip Salt, Ben Duckett, Jos Buttler(c), Harry Brook, Liam Livingstone, Jamie Smith(w), Jamie Overton, Brydon Carse, Jofra Archer, Adil Rashid, Mark Wood.
India: Sanju Samson(w), Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma, Suryakumar Yadav(c), Dhruv Jurel, Hardik Pandya, Washington Sundar, Axar Patel, Mohammed Shami, Ravi Bishnoi, Varun Chakravarthy.
(IANS)
