The India vs England warm-up match at Barsapara Cricket Stadium, Guwahati on September 30 was abandoned without a ball being bowled. Relentless rain prevented the game from starting after the coin toss. The cut-off time for the match to start was 7:30 PM. However, even when the rain stopped the conditions were not ideal to play. Meanwhile, players had already returned to the hotel as they anticipated that the game was unlikely to start in rainy conditions.
Earlier, Rohit Sharma won the toss and opted to bat 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,” he said.
Buttler said that he will use his resources in a way that they don’t get injured before the mega event. “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,” the wicketkeeper-batter said.
India will take on minnows Netherlands in their second warm-up game at Greenfield International Stadium, Thiruvananthapuram on October 3. On the other hand, the defending champions England will have their second warm-up match in Guwahati against Bangladesh on October 2.
Squads:
India: Rohit Sharma(c), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Ishan Kishan, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul(w), Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Kuldeep Yadav, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Mohammed Shami
England: Dawid Malan, Jonny Bairstow, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Jos Buttler(w/c), Liam Livingstone, Ben Stokes, Moeen Ali, Chris Woakes, Sam Curran, David Willey, Adil Rashid, Gus Atkinson, Reece Topley, Mark Wood
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