England announce playing XI for 2nd Test against India, make two changes

England have named their playing XI for the second Test against India, a day in advance as they did for the series opener. The visitors have made a couple of changes to their line-up for the second Test at the Dr. Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium in Vizag with 20-year-old Somerset off-spinner Shoaib Bashir set to make his debut. Bashir, who arrived in India late due to visa delay, has a lot of buzz around him as captain Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum seem very confident of his abilities despite him playing just six first-class matches.

Bashir replaced the senior left-arm spinner Jack Leach, who was out injured. Apart from Bashir, the other change was also in the bowling department with the veteran James Anderson replacing Mark Wood as the sole pacer for the game. Anderson missed out on selection in the first game but will now be playing



a game after a gap of six months with England set to rotate their pacers for the whole of the five-match series.

The rest of the line-up remained the same as England will aim to extend their lead over underconfident India. 

It was a remarkable heist from England in Hyderabad after they were 190 runs behind India in the first innings before OIlie Pope played one of the best innings by an overseas batter in India. Pope's 196 helped England set a target of 231 runs for India to win, which proved to be too much in the end for the hosts. India were bowled out for 202 with Tom Hartley, the debutant in the first game taking 7/62.

England playing XI for 2nd Test: Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes (c), Ben Foakes (wk), Rehan Ahmed, Tom Hartley, Shoaib Bashir, James Anderson