Ahmedabad,FEB 11
A big knock from Virat Kohli’s currently silent bat along with a series clean-sweep over England will be on Team India’s wish-list when the two teams square off in the third and final ODI here on Wednesday, marking the end of their Champions Trophy build-up.While India hold an unassailable 2-0 lead with identical four-wicket wins in each of the first two ODIs, Rohit Sharma’s men will be extra motivated to get a win here at the Narendra Modi Stadium where they had suffered a crushing ODI World Cup final loss in 2023.
Needless to say, having their batting mainstay Kohli among runs and a win would be the perfect culmination to the home side’s Champions Trophy preparations.The eight-team competition gets underway from February 19 in Karachi with India starting against Bangladesh the next day in Dubai as per a hybrid model of hosting. The team has already got a shot in the arm by Rohit’s return to form. His 90-ball 119 in the second ODI was a source of relief to both the side and to him after a prolonged run of poor scores.
Kohli hasn’t looked completely out of touch but hasn’t stayed at the crease for long enough to give himself a chance for a big knock either.If he manages to click, Kohli is in with a chance create another record. He is 89 runs short of becoming only the third batter in history to score 14,000 runs in the format which arguably has been the run-machine’s favourite. India don’t seem to have put a foot wrong in this series as they continue to make the most of their rich reservoir of talent.The addition of Varun Chakravarthy has given additional ammunition to their lethal spin attack which will be vital for the Champions Trophy and Mohammed Shami’s return after lengthy injury layoff has been seamless too.
Teams (from):
India: Rohit Sharma (c), Shubman Gill (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul (wk), Rishabh Pant (wk), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Harshit Rana, Mohd. Shami, Arshdeep Singh and Varun Chakaravarthy.
England: Jos Buttler (c&wk), Harry Brook, Ben Duckett, Joe Root, Philip Salt, Jamie Smith (wk), Tom Banton, Brydon Carse, Liam Livingstone, Jamie Overton, Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson, Saqib Mahmood, Adil Rashid and Mark Wood.
