The excellent form of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma has reduced to some extent the growing concerns of Team India regarding injuries to some key players. Team India will try to take an unassailable lead in the three-match series by winning the second One Day International cricket match against New Zealand to be held in Rajkot on Wednesday, January 14. India defeated New Zealand by four wickets in the first match played in Vadodara. Washington Sundar was injured in that match and is out of the ODI series. Before him, Rishabh Pant was injured and ruled out of the series. The selectors have included Delhi’s Ayush Badoni in the team, but considering India’s head coach Gautam Gambhir’s strategy of giving priority to all-rounders, another all-rounder in the form of Nitish Kumar Reddy can be included in the final eleven. Rishabh Pant was out of the series due to injury before the first ODI. The selectors decided to replace him with Dhruv Jurel, who can be another option for the team management as a specialist batsman. The Indian team has many options, but keeping in mind the T20 World Cup starting next month, it would not like to take any kind of risk. The T20 team will have a completely different batting order from the ODI team, but some names are common in both the teams. The most important name among these is that of all-rounder Tilak Verma, who will not be able to play in the first three T20 matches against New Zealand due to a groin injury. Amidst these concerns of the Indian team, all eyes will be on Kohli and Rohit Sharma, who are playing strong cricket even at the last stage of their career. In the first match, Kohli missed his 54th century in ODI, but his innings of 93 runs in 91 balls laid the foundation of India’s victory. There is a lot of difference between the teams of India and New Zealand. The bowling attack of the Kiwi team is not strong and the Indian batsmen will try to take full advantage of it. In the first match, captain Shubman Gill played a solid half-century, while vice-captain Shreyas Iyer missed scoring a half-century by one run. Rohit Sharma will again try to give a good start to India. Kohli is playing a different kind of cricket this time and he looks full of confidence. It seems that he is completely free from the burden of expectations and criticism. Right from the beginning, Kohli has neither refrained from batting aggressively nor left any chance to score runs. That’s why he made the record of scoring 28,000 runs in the fewest innings across all formats in Vadodara. India, however, needs to improve the performance of its bowling, especially the spinners. In the last match, the fast bowlers got some wickets due to their strategy of reducing the ball speed and the spinners will hope for a better pitch at the Niranjan Shah Stadium. Despite the defeat in the first ODI, New Zealand must have got a lot of confidence from the fact that despite Kohli’s brilliant performance, they gave a tough fight to India. When India was moving towards achieving the target with ease, Kyle Jamieson made the match exciting by displaying his bowling skills brilliantly. His team had to bear the brunt of dropping catches in the last moments. Left-handed batsmen Devon Conway and Henry Nicholls had given New Zealand a good start by adding 117 runs for the first wicket, but their middle-order batsmen could not take advantage of it. His team will enter the field with the aim of improving this department. The match will start at 1:30 pm Indian time.
The teams are as follows:
India: Shubman Gill (captain), Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul (wicketkeeper), Dhruv Jurel (wicketkeeper), Ravindra Jadeja, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ayush Badoni, Kuldeep Yadav, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Mohammed Siraj, Harshit Rana and Yashasvi Jaiswal.
New Zealand: Michael Bracewell (captain), Devon Conway (wk), Mitchell Hay (wk), Nick Kelly, Henry Nicholls, Will Young, Josh Clarkson, Jack Fowles, Daryl Mitchell, Glenn Phillips, Aditya Ashok, Christian Clarke, Kyle Jamieson, Jayden Lennox, Michael Ray.
