Toss India chose to bat vs England

England can secure their first men’s bilateral T20I series victory over India with a win in Bristol and will bowl first after losing the toss on a warm evening.

They made one change to the side that won the second and third T20Is after the first was wiped out by rain, with legspinning allrounder Rehan Ahmed replacing Liam Dawson. It ends Dawson’s run of 24 consecutive T20I appearances since making his return to the England side when Harry Brook assumed the captaincy last June.

India suffered their biggest-ever T20I defeat when they slumped to 76 all out at Trent Bridge on Tuesday night, and made two changes from the side that lost by 125 runs in a performance captain Shreyas Iyer described as “atrocious” post-match. He was in a better mood at the toss two days later, saying: “It’s a fresh day, fresh start, and the boys are in high spirits.”

Harshit Rana and Varun Chakravarthy were both ruled out for the rest of the series after sustaining hamstring injuries at Trent Bridge, and replaced by Prasidh Krishna and Washington Sundar respectively. Washington’s inclusion means that India have seven left-handers in their top eight, a possible reason behind Dawson’s omission.

Brook said that he would also have chosen to bat first on what he described as a “very good surface” at a ground which has produced high-scoring matches in its previous T20 internationals. He added that he was hoping for “more of the same” from England: “Adapt to the conditions as well as we can, communicate well, and back ourselves.”

England: 1 Phil Salt, 2 Jos Buttler (wk), 3 Harry Brook (capt), 4 Jacob Bethell, 5 Tom Banton, 6 Sam Curran, 7 Will Jacks, 8 Rehan Ahmed, 9 Jofra Archer, 10 Adil Rashid, 11 Josh Tongue.

India: 1 Abhishek Sharma, 2 Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, 3 Ishan Kishan (wk), 4 Shreyas Iyer (capt), 5 Tilak Varma, 6 Washington Sundar, 7 Shivam Dube, 8 Axar Patel, 9 Arshdeep Singh, 10 Prasidh Krishna 11 Prince Yadav.