Last September, India were on the verge of playing the fifth and final Test of the Pataudi Trophy against England in Manchester. But the fears of a COVID-19 outbreak in the visitors’ camp meant that the finale of the series was rescheduled to Edgbaston in Birmingham for July 1-5 in 2022. If the Manchester Test had gone as planned, India would have been the strong favourites to claim the Pataudi Trophy, having taken a 2-1 lead with famous victories at Lord`s (by 151 runs) and at The Oval (by 157 runs). England, on the other hand, had only a win by an innings and 78 runs at Headingley to show, with Joe Root shouldering the batting as well as captaincy duties.


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But as they say, a year changes a lot, especially in the cricketing world. Australia became T20 Men’s World Cup winners, Katey Martin, Mithali Raj, Amy Satterthwaite, Ross Taylor, Kieron Pollard, William Porterfield, Pieter Seelaar and Eoin Morgan are no longer international cricketers, IPL bandwagon saw two new teams enter the fold and one of the newbies win the trophy.


After that series against India was stalled, England plunged to lows in Test cricket, losing the Ashes 4-0 in Australia, losing 1-0 in West Indies. Root and Chris Silverwood stepped down from captain and coach respectively, Ashley Giles and Graham Thorpe moved from being managing director men`s cricket and batting coach respectively. The new set-up in Ben Stokes as captain, Brendon McCullum as a head coach and Rob Key as managing director of men’s cricket has meant that England are now a completely different Test side, playing a positive and aggressive brand of cricket which many wouldn’t have associated them with.


They recently completed a 3-0 sweep of current World Test Champions New Zealand, marking a daring hat-trick of 250+ scores. Their scoring rate was 4.54, the combined average of batters at three, four and five is 70.46. They are no longer dependent on Root the batter, with Ollie Pope and Jonny Bairstow stepping up with belligerent knocks.


Only four survivors from the England eleven which played India at The Oval last year will be turning out in Edgbaston – Joe Root (without the captain tag), Ollie Pope, Jonny Bairstow and James Anderson. For India, there have been a lot of changes too. Virat Kohli is not the captain anymore but his lean patch is still waiting to be broken. Rahul Dravid is the new head coach after Ravi Shastri left the job last year. Paras Mhambrey and Dilip TK are the new bowling and fielding coaches in place of Bharat Arun and R Sridhar.


Match Details


England vs India, 5th Test


Venue: Edgbaston, Birmingham


Date & Time: July 1 to 5 at 3 PM IST


Live Streaming and TV details: Sony Six Network and SonyLiv website and app


ENG vs IND Dream 11 Prediction


Wicketkeeper: Rishabh Pant, Jonny Bairstow


Batters: Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Cheteshwar Pujara


All-rounders: Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ben Stokes


Bowlers: Stuart Broad, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah


Captain: Joe Root


Vice-Captain: Ravindra Jadeja


ENG vs IND Probable Playing XI


England: Alex Lees, Zak Crawley, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes (c), Sam Billings (w), Matthew Potts, Stuart Broad, Jack Leach, James Anderson


India: Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Shreyas Iyer, Virat Kohli, Hanuma Vihari, Rishabh Pant (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Siraj, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah (c)