Coming into the fifth Test of the five-match series between England and India at Kennington Oval in South London, the visitors had a chance to walk off with a victory to draw the series at 2-2. It was an inspiring performance from the Blue Brigade to draw the fourth encounter at Old Trafford in Manchester with five sessions of batting. 

Under grey skies, on a surface of live grass where batting was expected to be a hard job, the touring captain, Shubman Gill, lost the fifth successive toss of the series, which is now the 14th instance a team losing all five tosses in a five-match Test series. The previous occasion of the century came in 2018 when Virat Kohli lost all of them to Joe Root.

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The focus was on their playing eleven. Even though Gill announced only three changes to the side, they made four. Dhruv Jurel replaced injured Rishabh Pant with the wicket-keeping gloves after the latter got ruled out of the clash with a fractured toe, which he picked up during the previous game while trying to reverse sweep Chris Woakes in the evening session of the opening day.

Playing XI for India and England in ongoing ENG vs IND 5th Test

Jasprit Bumrah, the premier pacer of the side, is not playing the decider either. In his place, the management brought Akash Deep into the side. The Bengal pacer was in fabulous form before getting injured in the fourth game. He picked up a ten-wicket haul during their 336-run victory at Edgbaston in Birmingham.

Karun Nair returned to the eleven in place of Shardul Thakur. The right-handed batter is slotted at number five for the fixture. He was dropped from the side after the Lord’s Test, having scored 111 runs at number three and overall 131 runs in three clashes. Anshul Kamboj has also been left out of the eleven as Prasidh Krishna returned to the side.

There was still no trace of Kuldeep Yadav in the side, who ended the trip with no game under his belt. 

India’s playing XI for ENG vs IND 5th Test

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