England captain Ben Stokes with his Indian counterpart Shubman Gill during the toss of the first Test in Leeds on June 20, 2025. Photo: X/@BCCI
England captain Ben Stokes won the toss and elected to bowl first during the first Test against India in Leeds on Friday (June 20, 2025). It will be the first Test for Shubman Gill as captain and he is leading an young Indian team without the likes of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.
For India, the Tamil Nadu star batsman Sai Sudarshan will be making his Test debut and he is expected to bat in No.3 position.
After winning the toss, England captain Ben Stokes said ““Headingley is a very good cricket wicket, hopefully use the early conditions and get something out of it.”
Indian captain Shubman Gill also said he would have bowled first.
Playing XI
India: 1 Yashasvi Jaiswal, 2 KL Rahul, 3 B Sai Sudharsan, 4 Shubman Gill (capt), 5 Rishabh Pant (wk), 6 Karun Nair, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Shardul Thakur, 9 Prasidh Krishna, 10 Jasprit Bumrah, 11 Mohammed Siraj
England XI: 1 Zak Crawley, 2 Ben Duckett, 3 Ollie Pope, 4 Joe Root, 5 Harry Brook, 6 Ben Stokes (capt), 7 Jamie Smith (wk), 8 Chris Woakes, 9 Brydon Carse, 10 Josh Tongue, 11 Shoaib Bashir.
Published – June 20, 2025 03:16 pm IST