Australia opt to bat.
India's cricket captain Virat Kohli (R) and his Australian counterpart Aaron Finch (L) (Photo: AFP)
Aaron Finch-led Australia invited Indian cricket team to field first after winning the toss in the opening One Day International (ODIs) match of five-match series on Saturday, 2nd March.
The series opener between India and Australia is being played at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Hyderabad. Ashton Turner is making his debut for Australia in this match.
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After winning the toss, Virat Kohli said, “We would have bowled first. We have done well chasing a lot in ODIs. And we wanted to back our strengths. This surface is going to be hard and it will be good to bat on. We want to continue what we did in New Zealand and Austrlia. Our intensity was top-notch and that’s exactly we need here. A couple of things we need to work on in our middle-order. We want to up the scoring rate more in the middle overs. We are pretty balanced as a side. We are giving Chahal a break today so Jadeja comes in. We would rotate our wrist spinners. Rest we have the same combination of 2 fast bowlers, Vijay Shankar and Ravindra Jadeja to provide us balance and give us depth in batting. Our top-order is same as we played in New Zealand.”
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Aaron Finch said: “We will bat first. It looks like a dry wicket. Hopefully, we can post a big score. We want to keep improving all the time. We have made good ground in ODIs in the last 4-5 months. We have made very good progress. Alex Carey comes in our team, Jhye Richardson misses out.”
Teams:
Australia (Playing XI): Aaron Finch(c), Usman Khawaja, Marcus Stoinis, Peter Handscomb, Glenn Maxwell, Ashton Turner, Alex Carey(w), Nathan Coulter-Nile, Pat Cummins, Adam Zampa, Jason Behrendorff
India (Playing XI): Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli(c), Ambati Rayudu, MS Dhoni(w), Kedar Jadhav, Vijay Shankar, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah
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