Toss India chose to bat v England
Rarely, if ever, has a 83-year-old dominated the build-up to a big Test
match, as the Eden Gardens curator Prabir Mukherjee has ahead of this
game. The standard musings over the composition of the opposing XIs were
put on the backburner to speculation over whether Mukherjee would
prepare the turner MS Dhoni wanted or not.
Dhoni didn't have his way, and the Eden Gardens track is expected to be a
flat and even one. Dhoni did have his way at the toss, though, winning
his third in a row, and expectedly opting to bat on a surface where
several of his team's out-of-form batsmen will look to get back among
the runs.
The changes to the teams were along expected lines. Fast bowler Ishant
Sharma comes in for his first Test in more than ten months, taking the
place of offspinner Harbhajan Singh as India reverted to their
two-quicks, two-spinners policy.
Ian Bell returned from paternity leave to replace Jonny Bairtow in the
middle order, which means Samit Patel keeps his place despite two
disappointing showings so far in the series. The other change for
England is the fit-again Steven Finn coming in for Stuart Broad, who
didn't take a wicket in the first two Tests. Broad was named
vice-captain of the side ahead of this series, and finds himself dropped
for the first time since the Chennai Test of 2008-09.
India: 1 Gautam Gambhir, 2 Virender Sehwag, 3 Cheteshwar Pujara, 4
Sachin Tendulkar, 5 Virat Kohli, 6 Yuvraj Singh, 7 MS Dhoni (capt.
& wk), 8 R Ashwin, 9 Zaheer Khan, 10 Ishant Sharma, 11 Pragyan Ojha
England: 1 Alastair Cook (capt.), 2 Nick Compton, 3 Jonathan
Trott, 4 Kevin Pietersen, 5 Ian Bell, 6 Samit Patel, 7 Matt Prior (wk), 8
Graeme Swann, 9 James Anderson, 10 Steven Finn, 11 Monty Panesar
Siddarth Ravindran is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo
Feeds: Siddarth Ravindran
© ESPN EMEA Ltd.
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