Unchanged India opt to bat in decider; Sri Lanka bring Avishka in

Posted By on January 7, 2023

In a night game in Rajkot, you expect any captain to bowl first should they win the toss. But in the decider of the T20I series, both India and Sri Lanka captains said they wanted to bat first. At the toss, Hardik Pandya got his pick as Dasun Shanaka called wrong.

The pitch is expected to be tacky at the start but Hardik said they were expecting some swing at the start of the second innings. He didn’t say this time that he was putting his team in a situation to do the less-desired thing in a bilateral series so that they can be prepared for these situations in tournament play.

India made no change to the XI that lost in Pune. That once again left India with batting only till No. 7 although Shivam Mavi did surprise with a couple of big hits in the Pune match. There was speculation if they might want to leave out Yuzvendra Chahal for Washington Sundar, who can also bat.
Sri Lanka made one change to their XI, leaving out Bhanuka Rajapaksa for Avishka Fernando. Rajapaksa hasn’t had the best of times in this series, and Shanaka said Fernando has been in good form in the Lanka Premier League.

India: 1 Ishan Kishan (wk), 2 Shubman Gill, 3 Rahul Tripathi, 4 Suryakumar Yadav, 5 Hardik Pandya (capt), 6 Deepak Hooda, 7 Axar Patel, 8 Shivam Mavi, 9 Umran Malik, 10 Arshdeep Singh, 11 Yuzvendra Chahal

Sri Lanka: 1 Pathum Nissanka, 2 Kusal Mendis (wk), 3 Dhananjaya de Silva, 4 Charith Asalanka, 5 Avishka Fernando, 6 Dasun Shanaka (capt), 7 Wanindu Hasaranga, 8 Chamika Karunaratne, 9 Maheesh Theekshana, 10 Kasun Rajitha, 11 Dilshan Madushanka

Sidharth Monga is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo

Source: ESPN Crickinfo

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