Australia are persisting with their three-pronged spin attack of their third Test against India, while the hosts made two changes in their side in Indore on Wednesday.

Trailing 2-0 in the series, and with captain Pat Cummins returning home for personal reasons, Australia welcomed back Mitchell Starc from a finger injury as the only full-time pacer bowler in the line-up.

Also coming into the visiting side is all-rounder Cameron Green, with the injured David Warner joining Cummins as the outs, leaving Travis Head and Usman Khawaja to open the batting. Matt Renshaw had replaced Warner mid-game in the second Test as a concussion sub.

Retaining their places are the spinning trio of Nathan Lyon, Todd Murphy and Matt Kuhnemann, while the addition of Green for Warner gives the Australians another weapon in their pace attack.

For India, K.L. Rahul was dropped and Mohammed Shami was rested, with opening batsman Shubman Gill and fast bowler Umesh Yadav taking their place. India won the toss and elected to bat.

Kuldeep Yadav's exclusion from India's squad to face Bangladesh was a "management call", with team-mate Umesh Yadav describing the decisions as something people had to accept.

The fast bowler took eight wickets as the tourists sealed the first Test in Chittagong in style and was expected to keep his place for the second and final game in Mirpur.

But Kuldeep was excluded to make way for an additional pace option in Jaydev Unadkat, who played his first red-ball match for India in over a decade in his place.

The call from coach Rahul Dravid caught many by surprise, but Umesh was unmoved in his post-stumps assessment, simply indicating his omission was nothing out of the ordinary.

"It's part of your journey," he said. "It happened to me. Sometimes you are out of the team because of performance.

"Sometimes it's a management call. You have to go with the team's requirements. It's good for him."

Unadkat, playing in his second Test match a dozen years after he debuted as a teenager at Centurion against South Africa, repaid the faith with two wickets, including that of first-Test centurion Zakir Hasan.

Umesh was delighted to see him earn a second chance, adding: "When he made his debut, I was with him in South Africa. I'm very happy that he finally got his chance.

"When he came in to bowl with the new ball, [it] was doing a bit. We know [he] can swing it both ways, so he just had to keep bowling in the right areas."

India will resume on day two in Mirpur trailing by 208 runs.

Andre Russell blasted a blistering unbeaten half-century and Umesh Yadav claimed his best Indian Premier League figures as Kolkata Knight Riders beat Punjab Kings by six wickets.

KKR moved to the top of the table with an emphatic victory at the Wankhede Stadium on Friday after bowling the Kings out for 137 all out off 18.2 overs.

Yadav took 4-23 off his four excellent overs as Punjab fell well short of posting a challenging target, Bhanuka Rajapaksa top scoring with 31 and Kagiso Rabada making 25 down the order on his debut.

The new-look Kings side crumbled from 62-2 in the sixth over, with dangerous duo Shikhar Dhawan and Liam Livingstone getting starts but failing to go on.

Tim Southee claimed 2-36, while Sunil Narine took 1-23 from his full compliment of overs, and Russell removed Rabada with the first ball he bowled before ending Punjab's innings by whipping off the bails to run Arshdeep Singh out off the next delivery.

Rabada removed Ajinkya Rahane, who reached the 4,000-run IPL milestone before falling for 12, and Venkatesh Iyer was dismissed by Odean Smith for only three.

It appeared to be game on when Rahul Chahar saw the back of Shreyas Iyer (26) and Nitish Rana, reducing KKR to 51-4 seven overs into their run chase.

But West Indies all-rounder Russell then took centre stage, bludgeoning 71 not out from only 31 balls in an unbroken fifth-wicket stand of 90 with Sam Billings to get the Knight Riders home with 33 balls to spare.

Yadav takes purple cap

Seamer Yadav set the tone by trapping Mayank Agarwal leg before in a first over of the match that went for only two runs after Shreyas Iyer won the toss and put the Kings in.

He also had Livingstone caught in the deep, cleaned Harpreet Brar up and sent Chahar on his way to become the leading wicket-taker early in the tournament with eight from three matches.

Russell fit for the Kings

Russell was an injury doubt due to a shoulder problem, but he was firing on all cylinders as he put on yet another show to take over as the leading run-scorer in the 2022 IPL.

The Jamaican powerhouse struck eight sixes in a brutal knock, three of those coming off Smith in a 12th over that went for 30 runs. Russell finished off the job in style by launching Livingstone over the rope in successive deliveries.

Umesh Yadav has replaced Shardul Thakur in India's squad to face England in the final two Tests of their four-match series.

Virat Kohli's men responded to their 227-run defeat in the opening match with an even more resounding 317-run triumph this week.

After those matches in Chennai, the series will conclude with back-to-back games in Ahmedabad - the first of which will be a day-night Test.

That might mean an increased emphasis on seam bowling, making Umesh's return from the calf injury he sustained during the Boxing Day Test against Australia in Melbourne timely.

The 33-year-old, who has 148 Test wickets at 30.54, will undergo a fitness test before joining up with his team-mates and a fast-bowling group of Ishant Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj.

Thakur has not featured in the England series and was released alongside reserves Priyank Panchal, Abhimanyu Easwaran and Shahbaz Nadeem to take part in India's domestic 50-over competition.

Opening batsman Easwaran being allowed to depart suggests the forearm injury that kept Shubman Gill off the field on day four of the second Test is not something that will threaten his participation next week.

 

India squad for the third and fourth Tests against England: Virat Kohli (captain), Rohit Sharma, Mayank Agarwal, Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul, Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant, Wriddhiman Saha, Ravichandran Ashwin, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Ishant Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Umesh Yadav.

© 2023 SportsMaxTV All Rights Reserved.