England vs India: Team India indicates possible change in the playing XI for the 3rd ODI

Team India and England are gearing up for the series decider that will be played tomorrow at Leeds. The two teams appeared evenly matched at the start of the series as they are the top two ranked sides as per the ODI rankings. To kick off the series in style India won the first match comprehensively chasing the target and were absolutely outplayed in the 2nd ODI by the hosts. Thus the series is in balance and the final ODI will decide who takes the honours.

Ahead of the match while England will not want to make any changes to the winning combination whereas there are a few areas of concern for the Men in Blue. They are playing this series without their front-line pacers Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah. While Bumrah has been ruled out of the ODIs, it will be interesting to see if the team management decides to bring in Bhuvi for the important fixture.

Rahul or Raina could miss out

Another possible change in the XI is bringing in Dinesh Karthik for one of KL Rahul or Suresh Raina. The wicketkeeper-batsman has of late played in the Indian middle order purely on the basis of his batting merit. Karthik is in good touch and can play the role of the finisher, something the team has been craving for long. He carries enough skills to see through a tough phase and accelerate and even to go for the kill from ball one.

The Indian team put up an Instagram post where Karthik is training with the fielding coach R Sridhar. If that is any indication DK will be included in the XI ahead of Rahul to boost the batting strength. While Raina has to some extent justified his place in the team with the 46 in the 2nd ODI where he got to bat. Virat Kohli has also used him the 6th bowler to rotate his bowlers and make up for a few overs in case one of his five bowlers has an expensive time in the middle. Rahul, on the other hand, has scores of 6, 19, 9, 0 in the last four outings on this tour after scoring a hundred in the 1st T20I.

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The Men in Blue fell flat on their face in the 2nd ODI, after England batted first and posted 322 it didn’t seem to be a huge challenge given the way they had chased down 269 in the first ODI with 8 wickets and 9.5 overs to spare. However, once the top order was dismissed cheaply it all went haywire and they lost wickets in quick succession.

With the pressure of the scoring rate mounting and wickets falling at regular intervals Team India lost the match and the chance of sealing the series at Lord’s. This time they don’t have a cushion and will want to win the match to keep the momentum on their side heading into the five-match Test series.

Here is the Indian cricket team’s Instagram post:

@dk00019 learning the tricks of the trade from our fielding coach @coach_rsridhar.

A post shared by Team India (@indiancricketteam) on Jul 16, 2018 at 6:19am PDT

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