Why Shardul Thakur not playing today: India have made four changes to their Playing XI in a dead-rubber at the Newlands.
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During the third ODI of the ongoing India’s tour of South Africa in Cape Town, India stand-in captain Lokesh Rahul has won the toss and chose to bowl in a dead-rubber contest.
“Looks like a nice wicket, a bit sticky I think. We’ll try to get some wickets up early. We value each game. We want to go out there and put up a performance. The boys are motivated themselves. One more opportunity for us, a different venue. We have won the toss so hopefully we can start well with the ball and then go on to get the runs,” Rahul told SuperSport at the toss.
Having already won the three-match series, South Africa captain Temba Bavuma laid emphasis on “keeping standard” and “not dropping intensity”. Asked to bat first at the Newlands today, Bavuma considered a 300+ total as “competitive”.
“Very important that we keep our standard. We don’t want to drop our intensity because of the series result, we want to keep pushing our standard higher and higher. We always want to play our best team. It [different venue] will present a different challenge, we have to be clinical upfront. Anything above 300 is competitive,” Bavuma told SuperSport at the toss.
Why is Shardul Thakur not playing 3rd ODI vs South Africa?
Coming on the back of consecutive losses in Paarl, Rahul confirmed that they have made as many as four changes to their Playing XI. India, who could’ve rested multi-format players like former captain Virat Kohli and fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah to manage their workload, have included both of them for this match.
Meanwhile, all-rounders Venkatesh Iyer and Shardul Thakur, spinner Ravichandran Ashwin and pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar have been benched for batter Suryakumar Yadav, spinner Jayant Yadav and pacers Deepak Chahar and Prasidh Krishna.
While Rahul didn’t provide reasons behind the aforementioned changes, it is being reported that Thakur has been left out due to a niggle. The others in Iyer, Ashwin and Kumar had failed to create any impact in Paarl ODIs.
South Africa, on the other hand, have made a solitary change to their winning combination bringing in all-rounder Dwaine Pretorius for spinner Tabraiz Shamsi.
Jayant Yadav stats in ODIs
In 59 List A matches in the last decade, Jayant Yadav has picked 53 wickets at an average and strike rate of 34.09 and 50.7 respectively. Meanwhile, Yadav’s 898 List A runs have come at an average and strike rate of 23.02 and 78.63 respectively.
Yadav, 31, had made his ODI debut against New Zealand in Visakhapatnam in 2016. After scoring 1* (1) in his maiden ODI innings, Yadav had picked bowling figures of 4-0-8-1.
