Ajinkya Rahane, who is doing well in the IPL, has returned to the team, he played his last Test match in 2022. The World Test Championship final will be played from June 7 to 11 at the Oval ground in England, which is the home ground of the county team Surrey.
Realizing that the Oval ground is very helpful for fast bowlers, the Indian team has included 5 expert fast bowlers namely Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Siraj, Jaydev Unadkat and the same Shardul Thakur as additional pacers.
The Indian team last played a Test match on this ground in 2021 and defeated the England team. It is obvious that the Indian team will miss wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant, who will be out of cricket for the next 6 months due to injury, but KS Bharat has been given a place in the team.
His performance was not very special against Australia but the team has backed him and it is expected that he will do well in the coming time. In the final, India will face Australia, which will be captained by Pat Cummins. On the tour of India in March, Australia lost the first two Test matches, later they made a comeback but it happened under the captaincy of Steve Smith.
Will the Australian fast bowler, who seemed to be very unsuccessful in the Border Gavaskar Trophy on the Indian tour, be able to do something amazing on the Oval pitch and disturb the Indian batsmen?
During the Border Gavaskar Trophy, both Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel performed well with the bat and in bowling, both have been excellent. Ravichandran Ashwin will be in charge of off-spin bowling.
The most interesting thing is who will come out to open India’s batting? Rohit Sharma is set to replace him, playing as captain but who will come with him, two names have been given in the team, the first name is Shubman Gill and the second name is KL Rahul.
Rahul was dropped from the third and fourth matches of the Border Gavaskar Trophy due to poor batting and Gill came in to play in his place.Gill also could not do anything special in indore’s tough pitch, but came out as a century in the match in Ahmedabad.
For swing bowling, the Oval pitch will help, so the Indian team opener will be the one who can play well against the swinging bowling. In such a situation, it seems that Gill is going to be the team’s first choice in the World Test Championship final.
In the recently concluded ODI series, Mitchell Starc dismissed Gill twice in two matches and Starc will again bowl in front of Gill with the new ball in the WTC final. Looking at the latest history, it is seen that Indian batsmen have struggled a lot in front of left-handed bowlers.
This match is going to be great, the two best teams of the 2021-23 season will be face-to-face in the most awaited final. Australia will also be under pressure as they have lost the series to India, on the other hand, India would like to read the new conditions as soon as possible and perform well on the field with good batting and bowling.
India’s selected squad for World Test Championship final:
Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul, KS Bharat (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel, Shardul Thakur, Ravindra Jadeja, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Jaydev Unadkat