India make Bumrah call among other changes for Edgbaston
India have decided to remain cautious with pacer Jasprit Bumrah as they announced their playing XI for the second Test against England shortly after the toss.
At the toss, England captain Ben Stokes won the toss and elected to field first in Birmingham.
Speaking after the toss, India skipper Shubman Gill named his playing XI for the second Test and the big news to arise was that Bumrah would not feature in the crucial ICC World Test Championship contest.
"Just to manage his workload. We got a good break, but the third match of the series being at Lord's, there might be a chance that there may be a little bit more in that wicket compared to this one. So we thought, we'll play him in the third one," Gill said at the toss.
Ahead of the series, India management had announced that Bumrah would only feature in three games of the series to manage his workload. Bumrah played in Leeds during the opening Test, and sent down 43.4 overs across four days.
Akash Deep comes into the XI to replace Bumrah.
The other changes in the lineup were addition of Washington Sundar and Nitish Kumar Reddy into the side. Shardul Thakur, and Sai Sudarshan sit out apart from Bumrah.
On the decision to not play Kuldeep Yadav, India's left-arm wristspinner in the game, Gill said that the side wanted to bolster their lower-order batting.
"We were tempted to play him, but we wanted to add a bit of depth to our batting, that's why (Washington plays)."
England had already announced their XI on Monday, which was the same side that had featured in the first Test at Headingley, where the team secured a record run chase over India last week.
Despite India starting off well in the game, England kept themselves in contention over all four days before securing the Test with a five-wicket win after chasing down India’s target of 371 on day five.
England have an exemplary record at Edgbaston, with 30 wins from their 56 Tests with just 11 losses. On the other hand, a tall task awaits Gill’s side that will be without Bumrah, who have lost seven out of their eight Tests at the venue.
England XI:
Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ben Stokes (c), Jamie Smith (wk), Chris Woakes, Brydon Carse, Josh Tongue, Shoaib Bashir
India XI:
KL Rahul, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Karun Nair, Shubman Gill (c), Rishabh Pant, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar, Akash Deep, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna