Dawid Malan replaced the injured Sam Billings as the visitors looked to square the series
Toss: England opt to bowl vs India
England chose to bowl again, in their must-win second ODI against India, in Pune. This time it was stand-in captain Jos Buttler who called correctly at the toss, reckoning that the “pitch will be similar” throughout the game. Buttler’s decision went down well with India captain Virat Kohli who said that the hosts were looking to bat first anyway.
Both sides have been depleted by injuries to key players, with Buttler admitting that England will miss the experience and leadership of regular captain Eoin Morgan who has been sidelined from the rest of this series with a hand injury he sustained during the ODI series opener on Tuesday. In the absence of Morgan and Sam Billings, who jarred his collarbone while fielding in the first ODI, England handed a debut to Liam Livingstone and brought in Dawid Malan from the reserves.
In another change, they rested Mark Wood and gave Surrey left-arm seamer Reece Topley his first game of the tour. This will be Topley’s second ODI since 2016; he had returned to the mix for the home series against Ireland last year.
India made one forced change, recalling Rishabh Pant for the injured Shreyas Iyer, who is also likely to be sidelined from the entire IPL 2021. This means Suryakumar Yadav has to wait further for his ODI debut. Pant was carded as the wicketkeeper in what will be his first ODI since January 2020.
India: 1 Rohit Sharma, 2 Shikhar Dhawan, 3 Virat Kohli (capt), 4 Rishabh Pant (wk), 5 KL Rahul, 6 Hardik Pandya, 7 Krunal Pandya, 8 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 9 Shardul Thakur, 10 Kuldeep Yadav, 11 Prasidh Krishna
England: 1 Jason Roy, 2 Jonny Bairstow, 3 Ben Stokes, 4 Dawid Malan, 5 Jos Buttler (capt & wk), 6 Liam Livingstone, 7 Moeen Ali, 8 Sam Curran, 9 Tom Curran, 10 Adil Rashid, 11 Reece Topley
Deivarayan Muthu is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo