India vs England 2016: Action starts at Rajkot from today

Brimming with confidence after a 3-0 clean sweep against New Zealand, India would look on take revenge from England for the last three series defeats it faced against the same opposition when the two teams face each other in the opening match of the five Tests series starting from today at Rajkot, which is a debutant as the Test venue.

After their triumphs over West Indies and New Zealand the morale of Team India, which is also ranked World No.1 now, is high.

On the other hand, the current No. 4 ranked England are coming from a recent Test defeat at the hands of Bangladesh. It would be a big task for Alastair Cook to re-instate the confidence in his team when they would take on the No.1 Test side, that too in their den.

 

India have lost the last three Test series (2011 and 2014 in England and in 2012 series at home) to the current No. 4 Test-ranked side. So far, the two sides have locked horns 112 times in Test matches, out of which England have won 43, India 21 and the rest 48 have been draws.

The Virat Kohli-led side will aim to, at least, draw the upcoming five-match series against England in order to seal their number-one ranking at the end of the year.

In this scenario, India (currently with 115 points) will finish on 113 points and will, thus, be untouchable even if Australia bounces back to win the remaining two Tests against South Africa or Pakistan wins both the Tests against New Zealand.

The squads of the two teams are as follow:

England squad: Alastair Cook (Captain), Moeen Ali, Zafar Ansari, Johny Bairstow (WK), Jake Ball, Gary Ballance, Gareth Batty, Stuart Broad, Jose Buttler, Ben Duckett, Steve Finn, H Hameed, Adil Rashid, Joe Root, Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes.

India squad: Virat Kohli (captain), Ajinkya Rahane (vice-captain), Ishant Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara, Gautam Gambhir, Jayant Yadav, Amit Mishra, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Wriddhiman Saha, Karun Nair, Mohammad Shami, Murali Vijay, Umesh Yadav, Hardik Pandya.