India have won the toss and have opted to field — a rare sight fans will cherish after months of unlucky calls across formats. Suryakumar Yadav couldn’t hide his laughter at the toss, celebrating the moment after famously losing back-to-back tosses in recent T20Is.
For India — Sanju, Harshit and Kuldeep are out. Sanju smashed hundreds in the T20Is against South Africa not long back, was shunted down the order to accommodate Gill, said he would be happy to bat anywhere down the order and now finds himself out of this game. What will he make of that? One can only wonder.
Arshdeep Singh finally gets his chance after debates around India constantly preferring batting depth over the left-arm pacer, despite his strong record in T20Is.
Captains speak
Suryakumar Yadav: “We are going to bowl first. The ball will come on nicely to the bat in the 2nd innings. Happy to take it one game at a time. We have three changes — Jitesh, Arshdeep and Washington come in.”
Mitch Marsh: “It’s a belter of a wicket. Want to get off to a good start and post a big total. We have just the one change — Abbott is in for Hazlewood.”
Playing XIs
India: Shubman Gill, Abhishek Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav (c), Tilak Varma, Jitesh Sharma (w), Shivam Dube, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Arshdeep Singh, Varun Chakaravarthy, Jasprit Bumrah
Australia: Mitchell Marsh (c), Travis Head, Josh Inglis (w), Tim David, Mitchell Owen, Marcus Stoinis, Matthew Short, Sean Abbott, Xavier Bartlett, Nathan Ellis, Matthew Kuhnemann
