Moeen Ali, Sam Billings and Tom Curran in England XI; Rishabh Pant and T Natarajan miss out for India
Toss England chose to bowl vs India
India gave ODI debuts to spinning allrounder Krunal Pandya and fast bowler Prasidh Krishna in Pune, where they were asked to bat first after Eoin Morgan won the toss.
“It looks a good wicket, there’s a lot of grass on it, more than we probably expected,” Morgan said. “It’s a lovely ground, change of format and we’re looking forward to it.”
England brought Moeen Ali into their team, giving them a second spin option, alongside Adil Rashid, Mark Wood and the Curran brothers. Sam Billings was also involved after sitting out the T20I series, while Ben Stokes, playing his first ODI since the World Cup final, was carded to bat at No. 3 in the absence of Joe Root.
India’s captain, Virat Kohli, said that he had wanted to his team to have first use of a “beautiful” batting surface.
“Very happy, to be honest,” he said. “Slightly different plans today for us. This outfield is very soft and we actually wanted to put them into the field first. It’s a beautiful wicket to bat on, very hard and a nice covering of grass, so I think its’ a great opportunity to put some runs on the board.”
The presence of two uncapped bowling options for India meant no room for Rishabh Pant or T Natarajan, while Kuldeep Yadav was preferred to Yuzvendra Chahal as the team’s wristspinner.
The three-match ODI series, with points for the World Cup Super League at stake, will conclude England’s tour of India, after the hosts won the Test and T20I encounters.
India: 1 Rohit Sharma, 2 Shikhar Dhawan, 3 Virat Kohli (capt), 4 Shreyas Iyer, 5 KL Rahul (wk), 6 Hardik Pandya, 7 Krunal Pandya, 8 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 9 Shardul Thakur, 10 Kuldeep Yadav, 11 Prasidh Krishna
England: 1 Jason Roy, 2 Jonny Bairstow, 3 Ben Stokes, 4 Eoin Morgan (capt), 5 Jos Buttler (wk), 6 Sam Billings, 7 Moeen Ali, 8 Sam Curran, 9 Tom Curran, 10 Adil Rashid, 11 Mark Wood
Alan Gardner is a deputy editor at ESPNcricinfo. @alanroderick