Twitter reacts as reports of India's playing XI leak emerge
India's had a great start to their England tour as they won the T20I series against the home team. England, the numero uno side in ODIs, bounced back soon and clinched the ODI series. The stage was set for the test series for the Top 2 sides in test matches to fight it out against each other.
The first Test between the two sides lived up to the bill with the home team edging past India by 31 runs in a thrilling encounter. Both bowling departments did great in the match and it was the better performing batting unit that took their side home. While Root and Bairstow did it for England in the first innings, it was Sam Curran, the young Surrey all-rounder, who scored a counter-attacking half-century in the second innings.
On the other hand, India's batting unit, barring Virat Kohli, failed to show intent. Even with Virat's 200 runs in the match, India fell short due to lack of support from other batsmen. As a result of this, there was a lot of discussion about the changes that India can make to their XI. While quite a who people discussing the batting order voiced out their support for Pujara, the ones focussed on bowling wanted the team management to include Kuldeep Yadav alongside Ashwin as the second spinner.
With all the discussion going around, the match was scheduled to start yesterday but the rain gods interrupted the play and the whole of Day 1 of the second test match got washed out. Just when it seemed that it will be a quiet day for cricket fans, allegedly leaked images of the playing XIs for the second test surfaced online.
If the reports are to be believed, India will be featuring the same XI and Ollie Pope will make his debut for the English side. As the reports of the leak surfaced online, the Twitterati were back at it as they voiced their opinion on the leaked playing XIs.
Leaked Indian XI: Murali Vijay, Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, Dinesh Karthik, R Ashwin, Hardik Pandya, Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Shami.
Leaked England XI: Alastair Cook, Keaton Jennings, Joe Root, Ollie Pope, Jonny Bairstow, Jos Buttler, Chris Woakes, Sam Curran, Adil Rashid, Stuart Broad and James Anderson.
Here's how Twitter reacted to the leaked playing XIs:
