Sport

Australia v India: first T20 international – live!

Published




08:01

While we’re waiting, feel free to read this terrific, insightful, brave, incisive essay on the switch-hit, authored by… yeah, it was me.





07:47

Interesting for Australia with D’Arcy Short opening now that Warner is out injured. Finch there with him, Matthew Wade keeping and batting at three. Swepson the leg-spinner comes into the team from outside the white-ball squad, which is interesting. Ashton Agar hurt his calf muscle the other night and left them short on spin. Swepson was in the Australia A squad to play the red-ball warm-ups before the Test series.

Australia
Aaron Finch *
D’Arcy Short
Matthew Wade +
Steve Smith
Moises Henriques
Glenn Maxwell
Sean Abbott
Mitch Starc
Mitch Swepson
Adam Zampa
Josh Hazlewood

Updated





07:45

Kohli says, “It’s a great chance to have a look at a few players. Pretty excited for them.” Lots of changes from the ODI side. Jasprit Bumrah rested after a tough couple of games. T Natarajan bowled well on ODI debut and keeps his spot. The IPL boys in Chahar and Sundar get a run. KL Rahul to the top of the order, Samson into the middle. The form players remain: Dhawan, Kohli, Pandya, Jadeja.

India
Shikhar Dhawan
KL Rahul +
Virat Kohli *
Shreyas Iyer
Sanju Samson
Hardik Pandya
Ravindra Jadeja
Washington Sundar
Deepak Chahar
Mohammed Shami
Thangarasu Natarajan

Updated





07:40

Australia win the toss

And the hosts will bowl first, says captain Aaron Finch. So they’ll take the common approach and chase. Didn’t quite work for them in the last ODI here on Wednesday but they should have won that one, really.

Updated





07:36

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07:28

Preamble

Geoff Lemon

A change of pace today, as we move from the 50-over game to the 20-over game. The first of three Twenty20 Internationals between Australia and India, this one in Canberra before the next two in Sydney. The home team was playing the 50-over games as though they were 20 overs a lot of the time, so perhaps that won’t make much difference. The Indians have just come off months of IPL, so they should be well attuned to the demands of this format. They won the ODI in Canberra on Wednesday so they’ll be feeling a bit more cheerful about playing again at this ground. It’s a warm sunny late afternoon at the moment, so we’ll look forward to a mild evening with the cricket on. What better?

source: theguardian.com