AGENCIES

After facing the onslaught and a defeat in the fifth and final Test in Edgbaston, India are set to begin the white-ball leg of their England tour with the first of the three-match T20I series in Southampton tonight.

Both teams are out there to test their bench strength and find the right balance in their squad ahead of the 2022 T20I World Cup later this year. India has been dominating the T20I circuit off late and England’s only nemesis in T20Is have been India on their home ground. England have lost only one T20I series on their home soil after 2017 and it was against India in 2018.

Skipper Rohit Sharma, who missed the fifth Test in Birmingham after contracting Covid-19, will be travelling to the port city on Wednesday and is expected to feature in the series-opener.

Test players including Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja, Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant will join the T20 squad from the second game onwards.

Their absence would give fringe players like Ruturaj Gaikwad and Sanju Samson one more game to make a statement though they seem to have fallen in the pecking order in India’s list of probables for the World Cup in Australia.

Meanwhile, the hosts will begin a new era in limited-overs cricket after Eoin Morgan’s retirement from international cricket. The destructive wicketkeeper-batter Jos Buttler, who is also going through a purple patch like most of the other English batters, is the new captain.