03:56
Toss: South Africa chose to bowl v India
JP Duminy, South Africa’s captain, chose to bowl in the first T20I against India. It was the expected decision: the chasing team has won each of the last four T20Is at the Wanderers.
South Africa’s joy of winning the toss, however, was offset by news that AB de Villiers, nursing a knee injury suffered during the sixth ODI, would not play. Their inexperienced line-up contained two debutants: the wicketkeeper-batsman Heinrich Klaasen, who featured in the ODI series, and the fast bowler Junior Dala, who has never played international cricket before.
India had one absence through injury as well, Kuldeep Yadav sitting out with a hand injury sustained while attempting a return catch in the sixth ODI. They decided to go with only one specialist spinner in Yuzvendra Chahal, and three frontline seamers, with the left-armer Jaydev Unadkat joining Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah. Manish Pandey came into the middle order for his first game of the tour, and Suresh Raina returned to the line-up for the first time since February 2017.
South Africa: 1 JJ Smuts, 2 Reeza Hendricks, 3 JP Duminy (capt), 4 David Miller, 5 Farhaan Behardien, 6 Heinrich Klaasen (wk), 7 Chris Morris, 8 Andile Phehlukwayo, 9 Dane Paterson, 10 Junior Dala, 11 Tabraiz Shamsi
India 1 Rohit Sharma, 2 Shikhar Dhawan, 3 Virat Kohli (capt), 4 Suresh Raina, 5 Manish Pandey, 6 MS Dhoni, 7 Hardik Pandya, 8 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 9 Jaydev Unadkat, 10 Jasprit Bumrah, 11 Yuzvendra Chahal
Karthik Krishnaswamy is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo