England playing XI for 2nd Test vs India: 20-year-old Somerset off-spinner Shoaib Bashir is set to make his Test debut for England in the second Test against India, while 41-year-old James Anderson returns to the playing XI. Jack Leach and Mark Wood make way for these two.
England announced their playing XI for the second Test against Rohit Sharma’s team. The game will kick start on February 2, Friday, at the Dr. Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium in Visakhapatnam (Vizag).
Shoaib Bashir will receive England men’s Test cap number 713, which is a full 100 Test caps more than James Anderson’s 613. It reflects on Anderson’s incredible longevity and the trust Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have in England’s most successful pacer, despite his lean run in recent times.
Left-arm spinner Jack Leach suffered a knee injury in the first Test in Hyderabad, which England won by 28 runs. Leach sustained a bruise to his left knee while fielding on Day 1 and his participation was hindered, though he made an impact with Shreyas Iyer’s wicket in the second innings.
Anderson will take over the role of the lone pacer from Wood, who went wicketless in the first Test. Anderson, who has experience in 183 Test matches, is 10 wickets away from 700 Test scalps, but his form is a concern, having picked only 5 wickets in 4 Ashes Tests last year.
With Leach’s injury, England’s spin attack is lacking experience: Tom Hartley made his debut in Hyderabad, though he did pick up 7 wickets in the second innings; Rehan Ahmed will be playing only his third Test; and Shoaib Bashir has played only 6 first-class matches in his brief career.
England playing XI for 2nd Test vs India
Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Ben Stokes (C), Jonny Bairstow, Ben Foakes (WK), Tom Hartley, Rehan Ahmed, James Anderson, Shoaib Bashir
In his pre-match press conference, Ben Stokes said he is expecting the Vizag pitch to play better on the first two days than it did in Hyderabad.
There have been two Test matches played so far in Visakhapatnam—India vs England in 2016 and India vs South Africa in 2019—both of which India won by a margin of more than 200 runs. Rohit Sharma slammed twin centuries in the 2019 Test against the Proteas here.
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India squad for 2nd Test vs England:
India have a depleted squad with injuries to KL Rahul and Ravindra Jadeja, and Virat Kohli remains unavailable. Rajat Patidar is likely to make his Test debut in Vizag.
India squad: Rohit Sharma (C), Shubman Gill, KS Bharat (WK), Avesh Khan, Rajat Patidar, Dhruv Jurel (WK), Kuldeep Yadav, Mohd. Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shreyas Iyer, Jasprit Bumrah (VC), Sarfaraz Khan, Washington Sundar, Sourabh Kumar, Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel
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