IND vs ENG: Shardul Thankur over Nitish Reddy in playing XI? Captain Gill vows go after '20 wickets'

India's newly appointed Test skipper Shubman Gill says that they'll be going for 20 wickets as that's the only way any team wins a Test match. The comments on the eve of first Test against England which starts June 20. This would be the first time India are going to play without Ravi Ashwin, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma - all of whom retired - as they enter into a new era. Gill, however, was wary of India's batting depth and pointed that that there could a bowling allrounder to accompany four proper bowlers. This indicates that Shardul Thakur might get preference over Nitish Reddy.

"Yes, definitely," Gill said in response to the question on the eve of Test match when asked if they'd be going for 20 wickets. “You can't win a Test match without taking 20 wickets, no matter how many runs you have scored. So, that has been one of our key discussion points, you know, how we're gonna take 20 wickets. And there might be a case, you know, where we could only be going with some pure batters and you could see a bowling allrounder and three to four premier fast bowlers or proper bowlers.”

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Taking Gill's statement into consideration, India's playing XI may look like as following:

Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Karun Nair, Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant, Sai Sudharsan/Dhruv Jurel, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Prasidh Krishna/Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Siraj

Gill's thinking behind playing four seamers could also be based on the fact that pacers have taken about 85% of the wickets in the last five Tests.

The pitch at Leeds offers good support to fast bowlers. Apart from England spinner Jack Leech's five-wicket haul in both innings against New Zealand in 2022, spinners have not had much success at Headingley.

Also, in the last five matches, most teams batting first were all out for less than 200 and the team chasing won four times with the average target for chasing being just under 300 runs (298 runs to be precise).