India vs South Africa, 2nd T20I: Toss, Playing 11 Update, Captains’ Comments, Pitch Report

Team India are 1-0 up in the three-match series and a win tonight will ensure they’ve broken the Proteas’ unbeaten run in a white-ball series on Indian soil in the last ten years. The visitors have made one change to their playing eleven from the first T20I, which was held in Thiruvananthapuram, while the Indians are unchanged.

After winning the toss, Temba Bavuma said, “We are gonna bowl first, manage our energies really well. This one looks like a different pitch. We want to do the job with the ball and then the batters to finish it off. We had a few positives from the first game. Just one change. (Lungi) Ngidi comes in for (Tabraiz) Shamsi.”

India skipper Rohit Sharma after losing the coin toss said, “Yes (we would have fielded as well). Just want to come out, play some good cricket and entertain the crowd. We have never beaten (speaking of a series win) these guys here and it’s gonna take a lot of effort from everyone to do that and we have come out prepared and pretty much ready for the game. Not too sure how the conditions will be. When I touched the pitch there was some stickiness and we gotta be a little cautious at the start. We got a solid batting line-up and it will be a challenge upfront. We are playing the same team.”

Playing XIs:

India: KL Rahul, Rohit Sharma(c), Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant(w), Dinesh Karthik, Axar Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Harshal Patel, Deepak Chahar, Arshdeep Singh.

South Africa: Quinton de Kock(w), Temba Bavuma(c), Rilee Rossouw, Aiden Markram, David Miller, Tristan Stubbs, Wayne Parnell, Keshav Maharaj, Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortje, Lungi Ngidi.

Pitch Report:

“Only the third T20I played here. There have been low-scoring games here and the average score is 145. There are a few cracks and the groundstaff have left a bit of grass as well. It looks very dry as well. Bowling first would be an advnatage and might get easier for batting in the second innings,” claim Ajit Agarkar and Murali Kartik.