England win toss, invite India to bat first in the Overcast conditions on Day 1 of 5th Test

England stand-in skipper Ollie Pope won the toss and elected to bowl against India in the fifth and final Test under overcast conditions at The Oval, here Thursday.

Trailing 1-2, India made four changes to their playing XI, bringing in Dhruv Jurel, Karun Nair, Arshdeep Singh and Prasidh Krishna in place of injured Rishabh Pant, Shardul Thakur, Anshul Kamboj and Jasprit Bumrah.

England are without regular skipper Ben Stokes.

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“We’ll bowl. Bit overcast, no-brainer to have a bowl on this pitch. Lost the captain but the others are tracking nicely, we’ve got a few fresh faces as well. We bat deep, Gus Atkinson and Overton have got runs. We’re not going to contend with 2:2, we want to go out there and win it,” is what Ollie Pope said after the toss.

“Don’t mind losing the toss as long as we win the game. Was a bit confused yesterday about what to do, was a bit overcast but the wicket looks good, we’ll look to post good runs in the first innings. Should be a good pitch for the bowlers. We’ve got three changes. Jurel, Karun and Prasidh in for Pant, Shardul and Bumrah. We look for a win every game we play, we’ve come close and it’s about that 5-10% extra push, boys will be giving it their all,” is what Shubman GIll said after the toss.

Teams:

India: Shubman Gill (c), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Karun Nair, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jurel Washington Sundar, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, and Mohammed Siraj.

England: Ollie Pope (c), Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Jacob Bethell, Jamie Smith(w), Chris Woakes, Gus Atkinson, Jamie Overton, and Josh Tongue.