England have left Rehan Ahmed and Mark Wood out of their XI for the fourth Test match against India, at Ranchi.
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England went 1-0 up in the five-match series in India at Hyderabad, where they overcame a 190-run deficit to win by 28 runs. However, India turned things around with comprehensive wins at Visakhapatnam and Rajkot. The latter, by a 434-run margin, is the biggest in their history.
For the fourth Test match, England have left out Rehan Ahmed and Mark Wood in favour of Shoaib Bashir and Ollie Robinson.
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Rehan came into the series with only one Test cap behind him, and his 11 wickets across three Test matches in this series have come at 44 apiece. Bashir, on the other hand, picked up 4-196 on Test debut, at Visakhapatnam, but was dropped at Rajkot.
This will deplete England’s batting order slightly – Rehan averages 27.96 in first-class cricket and has a hundred, while Bashir has 79 runs in 11 innings – but the former’s 76 runs across six innings have not made much of a difference.
The injury-prone Wood had gone wicketless at Hyderabad and was dropped at Visakhapatnam. Back at Rajkot, he jolted India in the first hour to reduce them to 33-3 and finished with 4-114 in the first innings, but went wicketless in the second.
Robinson’s 19 Test matches have fetched him 76 wickets at 22.21. He has never played Test cricket in India, but had a terrific tour of Pakistan in 2021/22, where his nine wickets at 21.22 on flat surfaces were key to England’s 3-0 sweep.
Contrary to expectations from some quarters, England have retained their specialist batters as well as wicketkeeper Ben Foakes.
England XI for the fourth Test match against India: Ben Stokes (c), Ben Foakes (wk), James Anderson, Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Ollie Robinson, Tom Hartley, Shoaib Bashir.
