Evin Lewis cuts through point © Getty Images
Toss India chose to bowl v West Indies
Virat Kohli elected to bowl in the first T20I against West Indies, saying he expected the pitch to get flatter as it was exposed to the sun during the morning. West Indies captain Carlos Brathwaite said he would also have bowled first for the same reason, although he mentioned the forecasted rain in the afternoon as one of the reasons as well.
West Indies left out Jason Mohammed, Kharry Pierre, and Anthony Bramble from their squad to put out an XI with one spinner in Sunil Narine. They picked. a potential top four of only left-handers, with Kieron Pollard, Rovman Powell, and Carlos Brathwaite making up the middle order.
India handed a debut to fast bowler Navdeep Saini and named three spinners in the squad – all of them fingerspinners. With the batting, they stuck with their famed limited-overs top three, leaving KL Rahul out and picking Manish Pandey ahead of Shreyas Iyer.
India: 1 Rohit Sharma, 2 Shikhar Dhawan, 3 Virat Kohli (capt.), 4 Rishabh Pant (wk) 5 Manish Pandey, 6 Krunal Pandya, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Washington Sundar, 9 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 10 Khaleel Ahmed, 11 Navdeep Saini
West Indies: 1 John Campbell, 2 Evin Lewis, 3 Nicholas Pooran (wk), 4 Shimron Hetmyer, 5 Kieron Pollard, 6 Rovman Powell, 7 Carlos Brathwaite (capt.), 8 Sunil Narine, 9 Keemo Paul, 10 Sheldon Cottrell, 11 Oshane Thomas
Varun Shetty is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo