NZ opt to bowl in 5th ODI; Siraj and Thakur in for India

Toss New Zealand opt to bowl vs India

The outcome of the toss was finally heads for the first time in 10 matches on India's tour of New Zealand. Consequently New Zealand won their first toss of the series and decided to bowl first despite what happened on the same surface two days ago: New Zealand scored 333 in the afternoon before India were bowled out for 89 under lights.

However, India's captain Shreyas Iyer said he would have bowled first himself. The reason both captains had for it was that they expected the used surface to settle down a bit. They also expected a bit of rain in the night to go with dew.

Both sides made two changes each with more key players moving to the Test camp. India added Gurnoor Brar to the Test squad at the last moment, but also released Kuldeep Yadav at the same time. That finally gave a game to Mohammed Siraj and a debut to the tall fast bowler Yash Thakur.

New Zealand gave India some relief by releasing Matt Henry and Kyle Jamieson for the Tests, making room for some overs for the two other Test fast bowlers: Jacob Duffy and Blair Tickner. The latter recovered successfully from a concussion he suffered when batting in the second ODI.

India 1 Rohit Sharma, 2 Ruturaj Gaikwad, 3 Virat Kohli, 4 Shreyas Iyer (capt.), 5 Ishan Kishan (wk), 6 Naman Dhir, 7 Axar Patel, 8 Auqib Nabi, 9 Mohammed Siraj, 10 Yash Thakur, 11 Arshdeep Singh.

New Zealand 1 Will Young, 2 Tim Seifert (wk), 3 Nick Kelly, 4 Dean Foxcroft, 5 Finn Allen, 6 Michael Bracewell, 7 Mitchell Santner (capt.), 8 Kristian Clarke, 9 Matt Fisher, 10 Jacob Duffy, 11 Blair Tickner.