Chennai, Dec 11: England captain Kevin Pietersen won the toss and elected to bat in the first Test at Chennai. Despite England returning with a full-strength team, the match on paper looks heavily tilted in favour of the Indians, who bulldozed the visitors 5-0 in the ODI series.
Yuvraj Singh is making strong comeback to the Indian side will play as he replaces Sourav Ganguly in the team who has retired from international cricket after the Test series against Australia. That is the only change from the team that had played the last Test against Australia in Nagpur. Opener Gautam Gambhir made way into the squad after serving a one Test ban
England would be looking to use the pitch well in the initial phase as the Indian bowlers would look forward to exploit the patches of grass on the turf.
The teams:
India: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh, Amit Mishra, Ishant Sharma.
England: Alastair Cook, Andrew Strauss, Ian Bell, Kevin Pietersen (Capt.), Paul Collingwood, Andrew Flintoff, Matt Prior, Graeme Swann, Stephen Harmison, James Anderson, Monty Panesar.
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