Australia won the toss and chose to bat v India
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Australia have resisted the urge to play to the conditions and instead picked their strongest XI, with Josh Hazlewood in ahead of a third spinner © Getty Images
Minor miracles have followed Australia over the past 24 hours. Since managing to be in two places almost at once, they gained significant advantage by winning the toss in Pune and batting first on a pitch that looks like it has aged quite prematurely. Bone dry, with plenty of cracks, Steven Smith even suggested that it might even start keeping low well before normal. He still played to the strengths of his team though, and preferred to go into the match with only two spinners – Nathan Lyon and Steve O’Keefe. Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Marsh rounded off the Australian attack.
India, on the other hand, had plenty of options to exploit the conditions with offspinning allrounder Jayant Yadav returning to the XI in place of Bhuvneshwar Kumar. R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, Nos. 1 and 2 on the ICC bowlers rankings, are likely to take on a heavy workload at the MCA stadium, which is hosting a Test match for the first time. Virat Kohli said he would have preferred to bat as well but brushed aside the importance of the toss by adding his team had lost three in the recent series against England and yet came out 4-0 victors.
Australia (probable): 1 David Warner, 2 Matt Renshaw, 3 Steven Smith (capt), 4 Shaun Marsh, 5 Peter Handscomb, 6 Mitchell Marsh, 7 Matthew Wade (wk), 8 Mitchell Starc, 9 Steve O’Keefe, 10 Nathan Lyon, 11 Josh Hazlewood.
India (probable): 1 KL Rahul, 2 M Vijay, 3 Cheteshwar Pujara, 4 Virat Kohli (capt), 5 Ajinkya Rahane, 6 Wriddhiman Saha (wk), 7 R Ashwin, 8 Ravindra Jadeja, 9 Jayant Yadav, 10 Ishant Sharma, 11 Umesh Yadav.
Alagappan Muthu is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo