After having won the ODI series already, Team India management decided to field five debutants for the third and final ODI on Friday. These players are K Gowtham, Nitish Rana, Chetan Sakariya, Rahul Chahar and Sanju Samson. The BCCI took to social media to make the announcement.
This is one rare occasion where a team has so many debutants in an international match. For the Indian team, last such instance was in 1980, where in an ODI against Australia at the MCG, Dilip Doshi, Kirti Azad, Roger Binny, Sandeep Patil & Tirumalai Srinivasan made their debuts. As far as the women’s team is concerned, during the only Test against England in June, Deepti Sharma, Pooja Vastrakar, Shafali Verma, and Tanya Bhatia and Sneh Rana had made their debuts for India.
In the second ODI of the series, India had scripted an improbable win chasing a target of 276. India kept losing wickets at regular intervals and were reduced to 194/6 at one stage. That is when Deepak Chahar brought out his best and smashed an unbeaten 69 to take the team over the line. He was ably supported by vice-captain Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who chipped in with a patient 19, and stitched a partnership of 84 with Chahar.
Interestingly, most of the Indian regulars are not available for this series, and are away on a tour to England for a Test series. Some of the fringe and young players have been given an opportunity to show their mettle on the international arena. In the previous two games, Ishan Kishan and Suryakumar Yadav impressed as well.
The former scored a half-century on debut, like he did in his T20I debut against England. Suryakumar, on the other hand smashed a fifty in the second ODI.
