England wins toss; elects to field first

Rajkot, Nov 14 (UNI) England captain Kevin Pietersen won the toss and elected to field first in the first one-day match of the seven match series against India here today.

The hosts, who suffered a set back when man of the series of the recent Test series against Australia speedster Ishant Sharma having being ruled out due to an ankle injury, have decided to go into this first match with three seamers and a spinner in Harbhajan Singh, with the fifth bowlers role to be filled in by Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag and Rohit Sharma.

Gautam Gambhir also makes a comeback at the top or the order after undergoing a one Test ban in the last Test in Nagpur for elbowing Shane Watson in the third Test in Delhi.

England on the other hand had their injury worries also with Ryan Sidebottom having to miss the first game due to an Achilles problem. However, as a big relief for the visitors, pacer Stuart Broad has been declared fit after sustaining a knee injury in the warm up game in Mumbai and will play here.

The teams: India: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (c, wk), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Yusuf Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Munaf Patel, R P Singh.

England: Kevin Pietersen (c), Ian Bell, Alastair Bell, Ravi Bopara, Owais Shah, Andrew Flintoff, Matt Prior, Samit Patel, Stuart Broad, James Anderson, Steve Harmison.

Umpires: Russell Tiffin (Australia), Suresh Shastri (India) Third umpire: Ameesh Saheeba (India) Match Referee: Roshan Mahanama (Sri Lanka).

UNI GS CS RN0907