Unchanged India opt to bat; Sri Lanka bring in Ama Kanchana

Toss India chose to bat vs Sri Lanka

Harmanpreet Kaur called it right at the toss for the first time at this T20 World Cup and India opted to bat first against Sri Lanka in what is a repeat of the Asia Cup final.

Harmanpreet, who arrived at the toss with a pain-relief patch on the right side of her neck, had walked back retired hurt while batting on 29 clutching her neck in the match against Pakistan. She confirmed that she has recovered from the neck injury. Having batted second in both their matches so far, she said she wanted the batters to “bat freely” and set a “decent total on the board”. Pooja Vastrakar continued to miss out due to a niggle with India going in unchanged.

Sri Lanka made one tweak to the XI that lost to Australia. They bolstered their bowling by including fast bowling allrounder Ama Kanchana for batter Hasini Perera. Chamari Athapaththu, on the eve of the game, had asked her batters to look inwards for answers on countering the conditions, and mentioned at the toss the importance of “running hard and batting smartly”.

The square boundaries at the Dubai International Stadium are 57m and 63m, with the straight hit being the longest at 73m. The temperature in Dubai had reduced and in the evening game, the ball would skid more and make it better for batters, former India head coach WV Raman said on the broadcast.

India will have to win big to better their net run rate and stay in contention for the semi-final. A loss would push them closer to elimination.

India: 1 Shafali Verma, 2 Smriti Mandhana, 3 Harmanpreet Kaur (capt), 4 Jemimah Rodrigues, 5 Richa Ghosh (wk), 6 Deepti Sharma, 7 S Sajana, 8 Shreyanka Patil, 9 Arundhati Reddy, 10 Asha Sobhana, 11 Renuka Singh

Sri Lanka: 1 Vishmi Gunaratne, 2 Chamari Athapaththu (capt), 3 Harshitha Samarawickrama, 4 Kavisha Dilhari, 5 Nilakshika Silva, 6 Anushka Sanjeewani (wk), 7 Ama Kanchana, 8 Sugandika Kumari, 9 Inoshi Priyadharshani, 10 Udeshika Prabodhani, 11 Inoka Ranaweera

S Sudarshanan is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo. @Sudarshanan7

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