Toss: India chose to bowl vs New Zealand
The threat of evening dew has led India to bowl after winning the toss in the first ODI against New Zealand, the first men’s international game at Vadodara’s Kotambi Stadium.
The venue has hosted three women’s ODIs, all between India and West Indies in December 2024. India won all three, two by big margins after batting first, with their seamers getting the ball to move around under lights, but India’s men’s ODI captain Shubman Gill felt batting was likely to get easier in the second innings with dew coming in. Michael Bracewell, the New Zealand captain, said he would have preferred bowling first too.
New Zealand had already named their XI on the eve of the match, handing seam-bowling allrounder Kristian Clarke his international debut. The Vellore-born legspinner Adithya Ashok, who has played two ODIs and one T20I, plays his first match against the country of his birth.
India named an XI featuring as many as six bowling options, with three spinners including allrounders Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar, and three quicks. Shreyas Iyer returned to India’s XI for the first time since recovering from the spleen injury he sustained in Australia.
New Zealand: 1 Devon Conway, 2 Henry Nicholls, 3 Will Young, 4 Daryl Mitchell, 5 Glenn Phillips, 6 Mitchell Hay (wk), 7 Michael Bracewell (capt), 8 Zak Foulkes, 9 Kristian Clarke, 10 Kyle Jamieson,11 Adithya Ashok.
India: 1 Shubman Gill (capt), 2 Rohit Sharma, 3 Virat Kohli, 4 Shreyas Iyer, 5 KL Rahul (wk), 6 Washington Sundar, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Harshit Rana, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Mohammed Siraj, 11 Prasidh Krishna.
