After much debate over the playing XI, the India vs South Africa second Test at Cape Town, begins on Wednesday. Former India cricketer Aakash Chopra picked his side prior to the start of the match, and made two changes from the first Test.
In a video uploaded on his Youtube channel, Chopra went on to say that there will be no changes in the batting order, despite their failure at Centurion. “The batting disappointed a lot in the last match but the guillotine will not fall on the batters once again because there are no batters in the squad. No one is sitting outside. Only Abhimanyu Easwaran is sitting outside and Rinku Singh has been called, but both will not play.”
“So exactly the same batting lineup will play. Yashasvi (Jaiswal) will be the opener alongside Rohit Sharma, Shubman (Gill) at No. 3, (Virat) Kohli at No. 4, (Shreyas) Iyer at No. 5 and (KL) Rahul at No. 6.”
Interestingly, while many experts have ruled out Shardul Thakur in the second Test, the all-rounder makes it to Chopra’s playing XI. “At No. 7, you will have Ravindra Jadeja in place of Ravichandran Ashwin. Then there will be a slight debate on Shardul Thakur, whether he should be played or not because he was extremely expensive last time, but he will be played because you need a batter at that number.”
“After that, you will play three fast bowlers. One will be (Mohammed) Siraj and second will be (Jasprit) Bumrah. There will be a long debate on whether Prasidh Krishna should be played or not and you will say, ‘let’s play Avesh (Khan) and give him a debut’.”
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