India vs England 1st T20I: Toss, Playing 11 updates, Pre-match Comments: Rohit elects to bat, Arshdeep debuts

Southampton, July 7: Having recovered from COVID-19, Rohit Sharma returned as India's captain in the three-match T20I series against England. Team India play the first T20I against Jos Buttler-led England at Rose Bowl on Thursday (July 7).

Toss Report: India skipper Rohit Sharma won the toss and elected to bat first against England and left-arm pacer Arshdeep Singh received his maiden India cap.

After winning the toss, Rohit Sharma said, "We are gonna bat first. Looks like a good pitch, and decent ground to play. Good pitch, the sun is out, the better thing to bat first. Recovered pretty well, and had a couple of hits before getting into this game. Looking forward to the game as well. We know the scheduling, we got to have the understanding, that players will be swapped every now and then. You can create your bench strength as well, a lot of opportunities for guys to come out and play. Exciting times, these guys have been here for a while playing in Ireland and played a couple of games here as well. We are making him (Arshdeep) play. There were a few choices for us, the other guys will have their time. Arshdeep has done well in the IPL, looks an exciting prospect."

England's newly-appointed white-ball captain Jos Buttler said, "Very proud day, great honour to get to captain your country. I'm looking forward to the challenges ahead. Eoin has been a fantastic captain for a very long time, he has left the team in a great place and now the pressure is on to keep it moving forward. The Test team has been fantastic to watch. Hopefully, we can ride that momentum as well. Gleeson, Willey and Salt miss out. We have got a couple of all-rounders in Moeen Ali and Liam Livingstone, they give us a lot of options with both ball and bat."

Dinesh Karthik: Got a clear role in the IPL and coming here playing instead of broadcasting, it feels nice. I genuinely believed I could be a part of this team, not only that, worked towards it. I can't say about others, but I felt I could play for this side.

Playing XIs:

England: Jason Roy, Jos Buttler(w/c), Dawid Malan, Moeen Ali, Liam Livingstone, Harry Brook, Sam Curran, Chris Jordan, Tymal Mills, Reece Topley, Matthew Parkinson.

India: Rohit Sharma(c), Ishan Kishan, Deepak Hooda, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya, Dinesh Karthik(w), Axar Patel, Harshal Patel, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Arshdeep Singh, Yuzvendra Chahal.