India captain Rohit Sharma opted to bat first against England in his team’s first warm-up match of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 in Guwahati on Saturday.
England are the defending champions after having won their maiden ODI World Cup title in 2019. India, a former two-time champions, made it to the semifinals last time around.
Also Read: India vs England Warm-up Match Blog
Rohit said the hot conditions mean he wants his bowlers to be fresh and therefore it played a part in his decision to bat first.
“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,” Rohit said at the toss.
“We just got to play good cricket, played seven or eight games recently. We want to make sure that the guys stay fresh for the 8th of October. We are playing one of the top teams and everyone is fit and ready to go,” he added.
England captain Jos Buttler said his team had a long travel and hence they are going to be cautious today.
“We had a long travel to get there, 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 (opening match of world cup) 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,” he said.
Full Squads
India: Rohit Sharma (captain), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Ishan Kishan, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul (wicketkeeper), Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Kuldeep Yadav, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Mohammed Shami
England: Dawid Malan, Jonny Bairstow, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Jos Buttler (captain/wicketkeeper), Liam Livingstone, Ben Stokes, Moeen Ali, Chris Woakes, Sam Curran, David Willey, Adil Rashid, Gus Atkinson, Reece Topley, Mark Wood
Comments
0 comment