Gill took his No. 3 position back as Rahul made way, while Washington and Akash Deep came into the bowling attack
Toss New Zealand chose to bat vs India
After he lost what proved to be a good toss to lose, Tom Latham won the one that is good to win. The Pune pitch was dry, especially in the good length for the spinners. It was a no-brainer that it was a bat-first pitch.
With Kane Williamson ruled out for this Test, New Zealand’s batting remained the same. A glute niggle to Matt Henry resulted a change in the bowling. Mitchell Santner brought in the extra spin option, and also lengthened their batting. Santner came off a disappointing tour of Sri Lanka.
India made three changes. Washington Sundar, not even a part of the squad originally, waltzed into the XI at the expense of Kuldeep Yadav, whom the New Zealand batters didn’t necessarily pick from the hand in Bengaluru. India perhaps wanted to lengthen their batting order, but also wanted that spin-bowling allrounder to take the ball away from the left-hand batters in the New Zealand line-up.
Shubman Gill came back to his No. 3 slot, and Sarfaraz Khan – his replacement – was rewarded for his 150 in the last Test. So making way for Gill was KL Rahul. The third change was like for like: Akash Deep replaced Mohammed Siraj, who has looked impressive in patches but hasn’t picked the wickets India would have wanted him to.
New Zealand 1 Tom Latham (capt.), 2 Devon Conway, 3 Will Young, 4 Rachin Ravindra, 5 Daryl Mitchell, 6 Tom Blundell (wk), 7 Glenn Phillips, 8 Mitchell Santner, 9 Tim Southee, 10 Will O’Rourke, 11 Ajaz Patel
India 1 Yashasvi Jaiswal, 2 Rohit Sharma (capt.), 3 Shubman Gill, 4 Virat Kohli, 5 Rishabh Pant (wk), 6 Sarfaraz Khan, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 R Ashwin, 9 Washington Sundar, 10 Jasprit Bumrah, 11 Akash Deep
Sidharth Monga is a senior writer at ESPNcricinfo
