Shreyas Iyer’s incredible run of luck at the toss continued as he called correctly for the 11th time in 12 matches as captain in international cricket. Unsurprisingly he asked Afghanistan to bat first as India looked to seal the series in the second match itself.
Iyer’s luck with availability of players wasn’t as phenomenal, though. Varun Chakravarthy, coming back from a hamstring injury, left the squad with a side strain after the first match. No replacement was named in the XV. Legspinner Ravi Bishnoi moved into the XI.
That was the only change India made, which meant the choice of the openers and the allrounders remained the same. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and Washington Sundar were the ones on the bench.
Afghanistan, still looking for their first win against India in international cricket, made no changes to the XI that lost comprehensively in the series opener. That could mean that the returning Naveen-ul-Haq is not yet fully match-fit.
Afghanistan 1 Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), 2 Ibrahim Zadran (capt.), 3 Gulbadin Naib, 4 Sediqullah Atal, 5 Darwish Rasooli, 6 Azmatullah Omarzai, 7 Mohammad Nabi, 8 Rashid Khan, 9 Mujeeb Ur Rahman, 10 Noor Ahmad, 11 Fazalhaq Farooqi
India 1 Abhishek Sharma, 2 Sanju Samson (wk), 3 Ishan Kishan, 4 Shreyas Iyer (capt.), 5 Tilak Varma, 6 Axar Patel, 7 Shivam Dube, 8 Nitish Kumar Reddy, 9 Ravi Bishnoi, 10 Arshdeep Singh, 11 Jasprit Bumrah
