India National Cricket Team vs New Zealand National Cricket Team Match: All-rounder Washington Sundar has been ruled out of the remainder of India’s ongoing ODI series against New Zealand due to a rib injury. Sundar suffered the injury during the opening ODI in Vadodara, where he bowled only five overs before experiencing severe discomfort. He returned to bat at number eight and helped India secure a win, but the injury prevented him from continuing in the series. Ayush Badoni was named as Sundar’s replacement, though he did not feature in today’s playing XI. Nitish Kumar Reddy has been included instead, expected to fill the role similar to Hardik Pandya in India’s middle order.
New Zealand captain Michael Bracewell won the toss and elected to field first. Bracewell said the pitch looked good and expected dew to play a role later. “We’re going to bowl first. It looks like a great surface here, and hopefully the dew becomes a factor later and it skids on a little bit nicer in the evening. We fought right till the end there, gave ourselves a chance with a couple of late wickets, we are trying to take wickets in the middle and put this Indian middle order under pressure. It is different conditions for us over here and you add in 40000 fans here, screaming for one team, it is certainly bit of a challenge but one that we are excited about and looking forward to another great game today. We’ve made just the one change - Jaden Lennox is coming in and making his debut,” he said.
India captain Shubman Gill said India preferred batting first, citing recent conditions at the venue. “Actually we would have batted first. Looking at the last few games that we've played here, even yesterday there wasn’t much dew, so we are looking to bat first. As I spoke to some of the players, they said as the innings goes on, it has the tendency to get a little bit slow. (On his batting) I was really confident when I was batting out there and very happy to always contribute, chip in some runs. Hopefully it's going to be a big one today. They started off pretty well but how we came back in the middle overs was very important, especially fast bowlers taking most of the wickets in the middle overs which is a bit rare in these conditions, very happy how they mixed up their pace and how they mixed up their deliveries. One change, Nitish comes in for Washington,” Gill said.
Playing XIs:
New Zealand (Playing XI): Devon Conway, Henry Nicholls, Will Young, Daryl Mitchell, Glenn Phillips, Mitchell Hay(w), Michael Bracewell(c), Zakary Foulkes, Jayden Lennox, Kyle Jamieson, Kristian Clarke
India (Playing XI): Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill(c), Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul(w), Ravindra Jadeja, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Harshit Rana, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna