NEW DELHI: Shubman Gill made his much-anticipated return to the playing XI as India captain Rohit Sharma won the toss and chose to bowl against Pakistan at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad on Saturday.
After winning the toss, Rohit said, "We will bowl first, cannot get bigger than this, fantastic atmosphere. Sure lot of us are going to experience something really extraordinary. It's a good track, not going to change much, dew could be a big factor and keeping that in mind, we want to bowl first. We want to keep striving for the best, we want to come out there and give our best in every game. Keeping the atmosphere in the team relaxed is the most important thing in a tournament like this. Gill is back in place of Ishan, unfortunate for Ishan to miss out, feel for him, he stepped up when we needed him. Gill has been a special player for us over the past year or so, especially at this ground and we wanted him back."
Pakistan captain Babar Azam said, "We also wanted to bowl first. We have had good two wins, momentum and confidence is high. Jam-packed stadium, we will enjoy it. We want to be good in the field, we had a couple of good practice sessions. Same team for us."
After a session of rolling, the pitch looked flatter and according to experts as the conditions are humid, the ball should swing around early on even though there's not much grass on it.
India's Shubman Gill, Mohammed Siraj and Pakistan's Abdullah Shafique and Saud Shakeel are playing their first India-Pakistan World Cup match.
Pakistan have fielded an unchanged side from its previous win over Sri Lanka.
India and Pakistan have won both their opening matches. The hosts beat Australia in their opener and Afghanistan on Wednesday while Pakistan easily beat the Netherlands in its opener and then needed a World Cup-record run chase to overcome Sri Lanka.
Pakistan have never beaten India at the ODI World Cup. Even when Pakistan won their only title in 1992, they lost to India in Sydney. The trend continued in 1996, 1999, 2003, 2011, 2015 and 2019.
India XI: Rohit Sharma(c), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul(w), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj
Pakistan XI: Abdullah Shafique, Imam-ul-Haq, Babar Azam(c), Mohammad Rizwan(w), Saud Shakeel, Iftikhar Ahmed, Shadab Khan, Mohammad Nawaz, Hasan Ali, Shaheen Afridi, Haris Rauf
