Sai Sudharsan made his Test debut against England at Headingley. There were doubts about him featuring in the playing XI, especially given Karun Nair’s performance for India A at three, but the team management backed the youngster. He has been named at number three while Karun Nair will be featuring at number six. With that, Sudharsan now became a part of a rare yet elite list of Test cricketers.
The 23-year-old joined the likes of Virat Kohli, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid among two others in the list of making Test debut on June 20. Ganguly and Dravid made it during the 1996 tour of England, while Kohli, Praveen Kumar and Abhinav Mukund made their debuts against West Indies on the same date in 2011.
England won toss and elect to bowl first
England have won the toss and elected to bowl first in the first Test. Even in the County Championship, bowling first became a trend as the surface got better as the match progressed. England captain Ben Stokes kept the trend alive, but it invited enormous criticism. Former cricketer Alastair Cook noted that it's a hot day and the bowlers will be tired sooner rather than later. Looking at the conditions, he believed that batting first would have been ideal.
“The fact it’s so hot… If you bowl first and don’t bowl them out, you’re bowling all day. England are guaranteed to bowl all day, and probably a bit tomorrow, looking at the conditions, unless India don’t bat as well as they’ve started. Therefore, you’re backing up. Say India bat 120 overs. They only have to bowl for two sessions [on day two]. You feel like you can control the game more if you bat first,” Cook said on BBC Test Match Special.
Teams:
India (Playing XI): Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill (c), Rishabh Pant (wk), Karun Nair, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna
England (Playing XI): Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ben Stokes (c), Jamie Smith (wk), Chris Woakes, Brydon Carse, Josh Tongue, Shoaib Bashir