England wins five out of five tossess and choose to field first at Oval. India make three changes with Karun Nair, Prasidh Krsishna and Dhruv Jurel making a return. Notbaly, Rishabh Pant, Shardul Thakur and Jasprit Bumrah has been replaced. Ollie Pope is leading in the absence of regular captain Ben Stokes, in the fifth and final Test of the ongoing series. The match is held at the Kennington Oval in London on Thursday. England currently has the upper hand in the series with a 2-1 lead. However, they will miss the services of their in-form skipper, Ben Stokes, who has been ruled out of the match due to injury. India enters the final Test with concerns over their bowling attack, which appeared to lack both pace and precision in the previous encounter. Kuldeep Yadav is still not included in the side instead Prasidh Krishna is given another chance.
England’s 11 for the 5th Test:
Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope (C), Joe Root, Harry Brook, Jacob Bethell, Jamie Smith, Chris Woakes, Gus Atkinson, Jamie Overton, Josh Tongue
India’s 11 for 5th Test
India (Playing XI): Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill(c), Karun Nair, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jurel(w), Washington Sundar, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Mohammed Siraj
What Did Captain’s Say
Shubman Gill: Don’t mind losing the toss as long as we win the game. Was a bit confused yesterday about what to do, was a bit overcast but the wicket looks good, we’ll look to post good runs in the first innings. Should be a good pitch for the bowlers. We’ve got three changes. Jurel, Karun and Prasidh in for Pant, Shardul and Bumrah. We look for a win every game we play, we’ve come close and it’s about that 5-10% extra push, boys will be giving it their all.
Ollie Pope: We’ll bowl. Bit overcast, no-brainer to have a bowl on this pitch. Lost the captain but the others are tracking nicely, we’ve got a few fresh faces as well. We bat deep, Gus Atkinson and Overton have got runs. We’re not going to contend with 2:2, we want to go out there and win it.