Toss South Africa opt to bowl vs India
India lost their 19th straight ODI toss and South Africa chose to bowl in Ranchi where both teams expected a lot of dew in the night. During this tour, India have had three captains in three matches, but have lost all three tosses. KL Rahul is the latest to join the unfortunate captains.
South Africa got a new captain in Aiden Markram as Temba Bavuma was rested after feeling unwell on Saturday. They also rested Keshav Maharaj, playing only Prenelan Subrayen and Markram as spinners. Bavuma's absence let them play both Ryan Rickelton and Quinton de Kock. Marco Jansen and Nandre Burger were the left-arm quicks to join Ottneil Baartman.
India made what seemed an aggressive move for them: playing Harshit Rana at No.8 followed by three specialist bowlers: Kuldeep Yadav, Arshdeep Singh and Prasidh Krishna. They have at times played Rana at No. 9, making him one of the three specialist bowlers to go with three allrounders. The allrounder to miss out in this case was Nitish Kumar Reddy, making way for two spin allrounders in Washington Sundar and Ravindra Jadeja.
Washington was all set to take over the No. 5 slot from Axar Patel, keeping captain Rahul at 6.
India 1 Yashasvi Jaiswal, 2 Rohit Sharma, 3 Virat Kohli, 4 Ruturaj Gaikwad, 5 Washington Sundar, 6 KL Rahul (capt. & wk), 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Harshit Rana, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Arshdeep Singh, 11 Prasidh Krishna
South Africa 1 Ryan Rickelton, 2 Quinton de Kock (wk), 3 Aiden Markram (capt), 4 Matthew Breetzke, 5 Tony de Zorzi, 6 Dewald Brevis, 7 Marco Jansen, 8 Corbin Bosch, 9 Prenelan Subrayen, 10 Nandre Burger, 11 Ottneil Baartman