Jasprit Bumrah has been rested, while Karun Nair has got his second chance in England as India make four changes for the Oval Test. Bumrah has been replaced by Prasidh Krishna, while Akash Deep and Dhruv Jurel have come in to replace Anshul Kamboj and Rishabh Pant respectively. India decided to strengthen their batting order by bringing in Shardul Thakur.
Karun played the first three Tests after making a return to the Test arena after more than 3000 days. However, he could only score 131 runs in six innings with an average just over 21. However, him coming in for Shardul did raise eyebrows. The all-rounder has scored three fifties at the Oval, and Cheteshwar Pujara wasn’t happy with the call.
“They should have gone with Shardul. And all the other batters have been scoring runs, so why do you need an extra batter? I mean, I know there is enough grass on this pitch, but you still, as Michael was saying, you need to take 20 wickets, and how do you do that? You don’t have Jasprit in this game, who is the front-line bowler. So you have got Prasidh and Akash, who hasn’t played the last game. So Siraj just started. So you just have 3 seamers. You need an extra seamer.”
“And maybe you can’t go with 4 seamers because if Arshdeep was playing this game, then you have 4 seamers, but all 4 can’t bat. So that’s why you, you can’t have 4 seamers. But at the same time, that’s why in English conditions you need an all-rounder and Shardul should be trusted a bit more, and they should have played this game,” said Pujara to the broadcasters.
The return of Prasidh to the side also meant that Arshdeep Singh’s wait for his Test debut will go on for some time. Prasidh was expensive in the first two matches he played. England won the toss on the day and opted to field first.
Oval Test: Playing XIs
India (Playing XI): Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill(c), Karun Nair, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jurel(w), Washington Sundar, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Mohammed Siraj
England (Playing XI): Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope(c), Joe Root, Harry Brook, Jacob Bethell, Jamie Smith(w), Chris Woakes, Gus Atkinson, Jamie Overton, Josh Tongue
– Ends
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