Toss India chose to bowl against Australia
Just four days after playing in the World Cup final, both teams face the difficult task of having to face the five-match series.
Australia made a number of changes to spark what could be a sluggish team trying to get out of party mode.
There was much intrigue over whether Travis Head, who was the player of the final after his century, would play after celebrating mightily with his revelry hilariously captured on social media.
But he was unsurprisingly left out of the XI, as were fellow World Cup winners Glenn Maxwell and Adam Zampa. Steven Smith will open having successfully batted up top for Sydney Sixers in last season’s BBL, while Josh Inglis will play as a specialist batsman at number 3.
India has an almost completely different team from the World Cup, with Suryakumar their only player to withdraw from the final. He will captain India for the first time in place of injured T20 captain Hardik Pandya.
Ishan Kishan will take up the gloves, while left-arm spinner Axar Patel returns.
The series may seem squeezed into cricket’s congested calendar, but for both teams it effectively kicks off their preparations for next year’s T20 World Cup in the Caribbean and the United States.
The surface is expected to be hard and good for hitting in wet conditions.
India: 1 Ruturaj Gaikwad, 2 Suryakumar Yadav (captain), 3 Yashasvi Jaiswal 4 Ishan Kishan (wk), 5 Tilak Varma, 6 Rinku Singh, 7 Axar Patel, 8 Ravi Bishnoi, 9 Arshdeep Singh, 10 Mukesh Kumar, 11 Prasidh Krishna
Australia: 1 Steven Smith, 2 Matthew Short, 3 Josh Inglis 4 Aaron Hardie, 5 Marcus Stoinis, 6 Tim David, 7 Matthew Wade (captain, week), 8 Sean Abbott, 9 Nathan Ellis, 10 Jason Behrendorff, 11 Tanveer Sangha
