India bat, drop Pandey for Karthik

India chose to bat v New Zealand
Live scorecard and ball-by-ball details

Dinesh Karthik at a training session © AFP

In what was expected to be a return to the usual high-scoring India ODI gone missing for the last two years, India won the toss and decided to put the runs on the board. New Zealand would have batted first too had they won the toss.

In a surprising move, India dropped Manish Pandey – looking for a long run to stake his claim on middle-order slots – for Dinesh Karthik, who has come back into the squad on the back of domestic runs. Shikhar Dhawan walked back into his opening slot, replacing Ajinkya Rahane.

An indicator this was a good pitch to bat on was that New Zealand picked only one specialist spinner. As reported earlier, they decided to play Tom Latham in the middle order, with Colin Munro opening with Martin Guptill.

India 1 Rohit Sharma, 2 Shikhar Dhawan, 3 Virat Kohli (capt.), 4 Dinesh Karthik, 5 Kedar Jadhav, 5 MS Dhoni(wk), 7 Hardik Pandya, 8 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Yuzvendra Chahal, 11 Jasprit Bumrah

New Zealand 1 Martin Guptill, 2 Colin Munro, 3 Kane Williamson (capt.), 4 Ross Taylor, 5 Tom Latham (wk), 6 Henry Nicholls, 7 Colin de Grandhomme, 8 Mitchell Santner, 9 Adam Milne, 10 Trent Boult, 11 Tim Southee

Sidharth Monga is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

Source: ESPN Crickinfo

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