India captain Virat Kohli has won the toss and elected to bowl first against Namibia in their final Group 2 match of the ICC Men's T20 World Cup at the Dubai International Stadium on Monday.
This is Kohli's last match as the T20I captain for India. It is also the last match of head coach Ravi Shastri, bowling coach Bharat Arun and fielding coach R Sridhar in the coaching set-up.
This is the first time since the T20 World Cup of 2012 that India have exited an ICC tournament before the knockouts. This will be India's first T20I encounter against Namibia. The only other time they faced each other was in the 50-over World Cup of 2003.
Kohli said that leg-spinner Rahul Chahar replaces Varun Chakravarthy in the playing eleven. "The tosses have been a big factor here so when I've won a couple it's worth doing what we wanted to do from the start! It's been an honour for me, I was given the opportunity and I tried to do my best. But it's also time to create some space and move forward. I've been immensely proud of how the team has played. Now I think it's time for the next lot to stake this team forward. Obviously, Rohit is here and he's overlooking things for a while now."
Namibia skipper Gerhard Erasmus said Jan Frylinck comes in for Karl Birkenstock in the playing eleven. "We'll just take this as a great opportunity to go out against one of the world's great sides. Opportunity for our batters to cash in against a great bowling line-up. The big goal was achieved in getting through that group stage. The invaluable experience we've picked up throughout these Super12s is something you can't replicate back home and in any other series. Absolutely positive feedback back home, everyone's quite inspired by what we've done. We've had some brilliant messages from all sorts of people back home, wishing us the best."
Playing XIs:
India: Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Virat Kohli (captain), Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (wicketkeeper), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Rahul Chahar, Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami.
Namibia: Stephen Baard, Michael van Lingen, Craig Williams, Gerhard Erasmus (captain), David Wiese, Zane Green (wicketkeeper), JJ Smit, Jan Nicol Loftie-Eaton, Ruben Trumpelmann, Jan Frylinck and Bernard Scholtz.