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India will begin their preparations for the ICC ODI World Cup when they face defending champions England in Guwahati on Saturday, September 30. Leading the charge for India is Rohit Sharma as the side enter the warm-up match ready to bat first after winning the toss.
India squad: Rohit Sharma (c), Hardik Pandya (vc), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ishan Kishan, Suryakumar Yadav.
England squad: Jos Buttler (c), Moeen Ali, Gus Atkinson, Jonny Bairstow, Sam Curran, Liam Livingstone, Dawid Malan, Adil Rashid, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ben Stokes, Reece Topley, David Willey, Mark Wood, Chris Woakes.
Sharing his thoughts about playing in India, England skipper Jos Buttler said, "To be in India ahead of what's gonna be a really exciting World Cup, for us it is very much about getting out there and getting moving. We had a long travel to get there, we will be a bit cautious today.
"There is a lot of experience in our game, everything including this game is about preparing for that (World Cup opener against New Zealand) match. We have plenty of guys who played a lot of IPL cricket here in India and really excited about today. All the players are fit and ready to go."
Meanwhile, Rohit justified his reasonsing for batting first, "Just want to make sure that our bowlers stay fresh and bowl under the lights which is not gonna be so taxing for the bowlers. Because we have been playing lot of cricket off late, so just want to make sure that we are looking after them. We just got to play good cricket, we played 7 or 8 games recently, we want to make sure that the guys stay fresh for the 8th of October. We are playing one of the top teams and everyone (in the team) is fit and ready to go.
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