The first big festival of 2017 will be followed by India’s first international cricket match of the year.
While much of the focus during India’s series-opening ODI against England will be on M.S. Dhoni, who, for the first time in more than nine years, will feature in an ODI only as a wicketkeeper-batsman and not as the captain, Sunday could also provide a hint on whether Virat Kohli would want to adopt a different strategy to that of his predecessor for the ODIs.
It will be interesting to see if the team at the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium includes three specialist pacers — in addition to Hardik Pandya as all-rounder — and either R. Ashwin or Ravindra Jadeja or if both the specialist spinners are played at the expense of one of the quicks.
If Kohli sticks to the former option, there would be little to choose between his style of captaincy in the blue jersey and that of Dhoni. But if he decides to play both spinners, it would mean that Kohli, along with the management, would expect Pandya to pitch in handily, with Yuvraj Singh and Kedar Jadhav — if picked ahead of Manish Pandey — to fill in the fifth bowler quota.
The teams (from):
India: Virat Kohli (capt), K.L. Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Ajinkya Rahane, M.S. Dhoni (wk), Manish Pandey, Kedar Jadhav, Yuvraj Singh, Hardik Pandya, R. Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Amit Mishra, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Umesh Yadav.
England: Eoin Morgan (capt), Alex Hales, Sam Billings, Jason Roy, Joe Root, Moeen Ali, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler (wk), Liam Dawson, Liam Plunkett, Adil Rashid, Jake Ball, David Willey and Chris Woakes.
