December 6: India v West Indies, 1st T20I in Hyderabad

NOTE: We might not always be able to tip you off about late injury (or other relevant) updates

Captain: KL Rahul

Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have not played T20s for a while but Rahul has, scoring 313 runs from eight matches (strike rate 155.72) in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.

Vice captain: Deepak Chahar

Smart bowling in the powerplay means Chahar has gone wicketless only once in his last ten T20 games.

Hot picks

Yuzvendra Chahal
Chahal is three wickets away from being India’s leading wicket-taker in T20Is, and the West Indians aren’t the best players of quality spin bowling.

Virat Kohli
Kohli has six hundreds in his last nine ODI innings against West Indies and averages 45.42 against them in T20Is.

Kieron Pollard
West Indies captain Pollard has played a lot of IPL cricket and has been in good form in T20s in 2019, scoring 1299 runs at a strike rate of 146.94.

NOTE: Nicholas Pooran is serving a ball-tampering ban and is unavailable for the game.

Value for money

Keemo Paul
Paul could be a surprise value pick due to his dual skills and his ability to bowl a lot of cutters and other variations, and did well in Hyderabad in an IPL game earlier this year.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar
Kumar, back after an injury, is the third best domestic bowler (economy rate 9.45) in the death behind Jasprit Bumrah and Siddarth Kaul in the last three editions of the IPL.

Points to note

• Based on historical – IPL – data, Hyderabad has two kinds of pitches: one is a slow and difficult to score on, the other is a batting-friendly surface. The average score on the belter was 213 and 146 on the other one. We don’t know which pitch will be used.

• Since 2018, West Indies batsmen score at a strike rate of 122 against wristspinners in T20Is, and are dismissed once every 18 balls.