India announces team for the first test match against England

Virat Kohli has announced the playing XI for the first of the five tests against England.

India are set to begin the test-series against England, with the first match starting today at Edgbaston, Brmingham. The five-match test series was preceded by three-match T20I and ODI series. While India overcame the English side in the shortest format of the game, England came back to beat India 2-1 in the ODIs.

Earlier, India began their tour to the United Kingdom with a whitewash over Ireland in the T20I series.

India received a blow when both of their first-choice pacers, Jasprit Bumrah and Bhuvneshwar Kumar were ruled out of the first test due to injuries.

In the warm-up match against Essex, however, Indian pacers pulled out a decent performance as Umesh Yadav and Ishant Sharma took seven of eight wickets against the English domestic side.

Playing XI

England won the toss and chose to bat first in the first test. Virat Kohli, however, said that he would’ve decided to bowl first as well. The Indian team took a surprising decision of leaving out Cheteshwar Pujara for the test match, playing the top-three of Murali Vijay, Shikhar Dhawan and KL Rahul.

Ravichandran Ashwin is included in the team as the sole spinner, while the Mohammad Shami, Ishant Sharma and Umesh Yadav retain their places from the warm-up match against Essex as the front-three pacers.

Here is the team:

Shikhar Dhawan, Murali Vijay, KL Rahul, Virat Kohli (captain), Ajinkya Rahane, Dinesh Karthik (Wk), Hardik Pandya, Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammad Shami, Ishant Sharma, and Umesh Yadav.