India rested fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah amid three lineup changes against England on Wednesday in its bid to level the test series at Edgbaston, reports UNB.
Bumrah, India's best bowler but on a three-test quota in the five-test series, was replaced by Akash Deep, who will play his first test this year.
Batting allrounder Nitish Kumar Reddy replaced bowling allrounder Shardul Thakur, who scored only 1 and 4 in the first-test loss in Leeds last week.
Washington Sundar, the off-spin bowling allrounder with 25 wickets and a batting average of 42 in nine tests, has also come in to shore up the batting which suffered late-order batting collapses of 41-7 and 31-6 in Leeds.
Sai Sudharsan, who scored 0 and 30 in his test debut in Leeds, was dropped and Karun Nair promoted to No. 3 in the order.
India was made to bat first on a batting-friendly Edgbaston pitch after the toss was won by England, which has an unchanged lineup. India captain Shubman Gill said he also would have bowled first.
England's decision means it will chase again in the fourth innings. It hunted down 371 in Leeds to win by five wickets, and chased down 378 against India on the same ground in 2022.
India has never beaten England at Edgbaston in eight previous tests going back to 1967.
Bumrah was available and had an eight-day rest since Leeds, but his workload is being managed to help his lower back.
“This is an important match for us, but the third match at Lord's may have a little more in the wicket than this one,” Gill said.
On not pairing first-choice spinner Ravindra Jadeja with Kuldeep Yadav, Gill said: “We were very tempted to play (Yadav) but looking at the last match we wanted to add some depth to the batting.”
Lineups:
England: Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ben Stokes (captain), Jamie Smith, Chris Woakes, Bryson Carse, Josh Tongue, Shoaib Bashir.
India: Yashasvi Jaiswal, Lokesh Rahul, Karun Nair, Shubman Gill (captain), Rishabh Pant, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar, Akash Deep, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna.
Bd-Pratidin English/ AM
