World Cup: Afghanistan win toss, decide to bat against India

New Delhi [India]: Afghanistan captain Hashmatullah Shahidi won the toss and decided to bat in the World Cup match against India at Arun Jaitley Stadium here on Wednesday.

India are coming into this match after sealing a six-wicket win against Australia.

Afghanistan lost against Bangladesh by six wickets in their previous game.

Hashmatullah praised his team’s bowling attack and said that they are looking forward to restricting India.

“We will bat first. It looks like a good batting surface. We have a good bowling attack to restrict them. It looks like a good surface, we want to bounce back with the bat. We are enjoying a good chance to showcase our talent. We are going with the same team,” Hashmatullah said.

India captain Rohit Sharma said there is one change in the team.

“We were looking to bat second. We saw the amount of dew last evening. Don’t think the wicket will change much. Need to bowl well and need to come back and bat better. We were under pressure to start with (in previous game) but KL and Kohli batted well, we take a lot of pride. It was a good game for us, hopefully, we can repeat that and keep the momentum going forward. Ashwin misses out, Shardul Thakur comes in for him,” Rohit said.

Afghanistan playing XI: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (Wk), Ibrahim Zadran, Rahmat Shah, Hashmatullah Shahidi (C), Najibullah Zadran, Mohammad Nabi, Azmatullah Omarzai, Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Naveen-ul-Haq, Fazalhaq Farooqi.

India playing XI: Rohit Sharma (C), Ishan Kishan, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul (Wk), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj.

The match between India and Afghanistan will kick off at 2 p.m. IST.