Both Australia captain Pat Cummins and India captain Rohit Sharma wanted to bat first in the ongoing first Test match at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium. Cummins, who called right during the coin toss, got his way in the first battle of Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2023.
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Having said that, the visitors couldn’t take advantage of Cummins’ initial victory as opening batters Usman Khawaja (1) and David Warner (1) were dismissed in consecutive overs by Mohammed Siraj and Mohammed Shami respectively.
The early dismissals of two left-handed batters has seen two right-handed batters in Marnus Labuschagne (47*) and Steven Smith (19*) fight their way out against five specialist Indian bowlers. As a result, Australia haven’t lost another wicket on the back of scoring 76/2 in 32 overs in the first session of this four-match series.
Why is Mitchell Starc not playing today vs Australia?
Playing a Test match after a month, Australia made three changes to their Playing XI which faced South Africa in New Year’s Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground last month.
Batter Peter Handscomb (playing for Australia for the first time since ICC Cricket World Cup 2019), fast bowler Scott Boland and debutant spinner Todd Murphy are playing the Nagpur Test in place of batter Travis Head, all-rounder Ashton Agar and fast bowler Josh Hazlewood.
While Head has been dropped surprisingly, Hazlewood was ruled out of the match due to an Achilles niggle in his left leg. Agar, meanwhile, was left out as Australia have appeared to back their gut feeling of Murphy impressing them throughout the training phase of this tour. Readers must note that it is for the first time in 34 years that Australia are playing two specialist right-arm off-spinners in a Test match.
As far as Starc is concerned, he was always going to join the Australian squad as their 18th member from the second Test onward in Delhi due to a hand injury. In fact, Starc hadn’t played the third Test against South Africa at the SCG as well.
India, on the other hand, have made as many as five changes to their Playing XI from their last Test against Bangladesh in Mirpur six and a half weeks ago.
Sharma, debutant batter Suryakumar Yadav, all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja, debutant wicket-keeper batter Srikar Bharat and fast bowler Mohammed Shami are playing in place of batters Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer, wicket-keeper batter Rishabh Pant and pacers Jaydev Unadkat and Umesh Yadav.
