India vs Australia Indore Test: Rohit Sharma drops KL Rahul, brings Shubman Gill in playing XI

Indore : India and Australia are playing their third Test match in the ongoing Border Gavaskar Trophy in Indore. Skipper Rohit Sharma won the toss and elected to bat first against Australia, announcing two changes in the playing squad. KL Rahul has been dropped and Shubman Gill has been called in as his replacement, Mohammed Shami has also been rested for the game as Umesh Yadav has been pulled in to strengthen the bowling attack.

Recently, Shubman Gill performed brilliantly in the limited over the format of the game, this is the first Test match he is playing in 2013. Before this, he had played a game against Bangladesh in December 2022.

"We have made two changes - Gill comes in place of KL. We have rested Shami and Umesh comes in," India skipper Rohit Sharma said after winning the toss at the Holkar stadium.

Meanwhile, the Australian side showed no mercy on Day 1 of the game and bundled Team India's first innings for 109 runs. Virat Kohli (22 runs) was the top scorer for the hosts as they failed to counter the Australian spin attack.

Talking about KL Rahul, he had been drawing a lot of criticism in recent days for performing below average in both the Test matches and the limited-over games. Rahul has the highest score of 23 in his last 10 Test innings at a lowly average of 12.5 in the said period. 

India is already leading the Border Gavaskar Trophy series 2-0 and needs just one victory to claim the series, No. 1 rank in Tests and ticket to World Test Championship final.

India (Playing XI): Rohit Sharma(c), Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Ravindra Jadeja, Srikar Bharat(w), Axar Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Siraj

Australia (Playing XI): Usman Khawaja, Travis Head, Marnus Labuschagne, Steven Smith(c), Peter Handscomb, Cameron Green, Alex Carey(w), Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon, Todd Murphy, Matthew Kuhnemann