Sam Billings replacement: The English batsman has been ruled out of the second ODI after suffering a shoulder injury in the last match.
Advertisement
During the second match of the ongoing England’s tour of India in Pune, England captain Jos Buttler continued on their trend of winning the toss and electing to field.
Buttler, who is leading England for the seventh time in ODIs in regular captain Eoin Morgan’s absence, laid emphasis on his team needing to deliver a “complete performance” at the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium today.
“We are gonna bowl first. Similar reasons to the other day. The wicket will be similar. Let ourselves at the end [in the first ODI]. Hopefully, it’s a complete performance today. We have to be smart, we’ll continue to play in the fashion that we did. We’ll miss him as a batsman and a leader,” Buttler told Star Sports during the toss.
Sam Billings replacement
As far as the changes for the visitors are concerned, they have made three of them as debutant Liam Livingstone, Dawid Malan and Reece Topley have replaced the injured pair of Eoin Morgan and Sam Billings and Mark Wood. Malan, who was part of three reserves, was included in the squad last night and is playing his second ODI today.
Talking about India captain Virat Kohli, he announced that the hosts have made a solitary change in including Rishabh Pant for injured Shreyas Iyer.
“We wanted to bat first again. Conditions play a big part, soft outfield again, just getting runs on the board in the last game really helped us out. We always felt we were in the game. That’s what development of a team is all about. If you want to perform anywhere in the world against your wishes, then you have to be ready to do whatever happens at the toss.
“That’s why we wanted to put ourselves in a similar position again even if we won the toss. Hopefully, we can do much better in the middle overs. You have to be precise in your plans and executions. That’s something we did the last game. We didn’t want to take the game deep. We wanted to attack at all times,” Kohli told Star Sports during the toss.
