Toss England chose to bat v IndiaLive scorecard and ball-by-ball details
Alastair Cook won his first toss of the series and gave his batsmen first use of a heavily cracked, dry pitch that is expected to turn increasingly from the first day. India decided to play effectively four spinners on this surface, with Ishant Sharma being MS Dhoni’s lone seam option.
After losing the Kolkata Test to go 1-2 down in the series, India had made three changes to their squad for the deciding game in Nagpur. Two of the players they called up were named in the XI – legspinner Piyush Chawla and Ravindra Jadeja, a left-arm spinning allrounder who scored two triple-centuries in the Ranji Trophy this season, replaced Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh. Chawla was playing his first Test since April 2008, while Jadeja was making his debut.
England also made two changes to the XI that won at Eden Gardens. Steven Finn was unfit so Tim Bresnan, who was dropped after a disappointing Test in Ahmedabad, made a comeback. They also gave the batsman Joe Root a debut and left out allrounder Samit Patel.
India: 1 Virender Sehwag, 2 Gautam Gambhir, 3 Cheteshwar Pujara, 4 Sachin Tendulkar, 5 Virat Kohli, 6 MS Dhoni (capt & wk), 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 R Ashwin, 9 Piyush Chawla, 10 Pragyan Ojha, 11 Ishant Sharma.
England: 1 Alastair Cook (capt), 2 Nick Compton, 3 Jonathan Trott, 4 Kevin Pietersen, 5 Ian Bell, 6 Joe Root, 7 Matt Prior (wk), 8 Tim Bresnan, 9 Graeme Swann, 10 James Anderson, 11 Monty Panesar.
