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New Zealand captain Mitchell Santner won the toss and opted to bat first against India in the Champions Trophy 2025 final in Dubai on Sunday. The Kiwis made a forced change as star pacer Matt Henry was ruled out of the match owing to a shoulder injury, with Nathan Smith coming in as a like-for-like replacement. India, on the other hand, named an unchanged XI for the summit clash. India have now lost 15 consecutive toss in ODIs, and 12 on the trot under Rohit (Probability of 0.000031 or 0.0031%).
With this, Rohit now equalled the record for most consecutive tosses lost by a captain in ODIs, equalling West Indies great Brian Lara.
“We’re going to have a bat first. Looks like a pretty good wicket, similar to the one we played India here a week ago. Want to get runs on the board and see what happens. Obviously expected a few blue shirts, great atmosphere, great ground. Going to be slightly different from what we got in Pakistan. We saw how India played and what they got out of it. Hope it slows down a bit later. Different guys have stepped up at different times. You want guys firing from the start and we have done that, as have India. Unfortunately, Matt Henry has been ruled out, we’ve got Nathan Smith coming in,” Santner said at the toss.
Despite losing the toss, India captain Rohit insisted that he doesn’t mind batting first.
“We’ve been here enough, batted first and bowled first, don’t really mind batting second. It hasn’t changed much, we’ve chased and won as well. It does give you a lot of confidence, takes the toss away from the game. At the end of the day, what matters is how well you want to play. That’s what we’ve spoken about in the dressing room, not to worry about the toss and to just play well, that’s what we’ve done and we have to do today as well. New Zealand have been a very good team over the past so many years, they tend to play good cricket in ICC tournaments. The challenge for us is to play well against them now. Same team for us,” said Rohit.
India (Playing XI): Rohit Sharma(c), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Axar Patel, KL Rahul(w), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Shami, Kuldeep Yadav, Varun Chakaravarthy
New Zealand (Playing XI): Will Young, Rachin Ravindra, Kane Williamson, Daryl Mitchell, Tom Latham(w), Glenn Phillips, Michael Bracewell, Mitchell Santner(c), Kyle Jamieson, William ORourke, Nathan Smith
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