GUWAHATI: Indian skipper Rohit Sharma won the toss and elected to bat first against England in their ICC Cricket World Cup warm-up match at Guwahati on Saturday.
India is heading into the game after a 2-1 series win over Australia. England is also coming after a series win against New Zealand. Skipper Rohit Sharma said at the toss that he chose to bat first in order to keep his bowlers fresh to bowl under the lights.
“We gonna bat first. No particular reason, it’s very hot out there. Just want to make sure that our bowlers stay fresh and bowl under the lights which is not gonna be so taxing for the bowlers. Because we have been playing a lot of cricket off late, so just want to make sure that we are looking after them. We just got to play good cricket, we played 7 or 8 games recently, we want to make sure that the guys stay fresh for the 8th of October (for the opener against Australia). We are playing one of the top teams and everyone (in the team) is fit and ready to go”, said Sharma.
England skipper Jos Buttler said, “To be in India ahead of what is gonna be a really exciting World Cup, for us it is very much about getting out there and getting moving. We had a long travel to get there, so we will be a bit cautious today. There is a lot of experience in our game, everything including this game is about preparing for that (World Cup opener against New Zealand) match. We have plenty of guys who played a lot of IPL cricket here in India and really excited about today. All the players are fit and ready to go”.
India (Batting XI, Fielding XI): Rohit Sharma (c), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Ishan Kishan, Shreyas Iyer, K L Rahul (w), Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Kuldeep Yadav, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Mohammed Shami
England (Batting XI, Fielding XI): Dawid Malan, Jonny Bairstow, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Jos Buttler (w/c), Liam Livingstone, Ben Stokes, Moeen Ali, Chris Woakes, Sam Curran, David Willey, Adil Rashid, Gus Atkinson, Reece Topley, Mark Wood. (ANI)