Right – Jofra Archer has the ball. Sanju Samson preparing to face up, with a short leg in place, along with two slips Let’s get it on…
6.55pm Alrighty then, I hope you’re firmly tethered to your seats with snacks and beverages close at hand. Here’s Vithushan Ehantharajah to bring you the start of this fifth T20I.
Harsh: “”People really have short memories. He made three hundreds in his last five T20I innings before this series!” – Did you forget the 2 ducks in between?! People remember more than you give them credit for!” — But that’s precisely how T20 works. When you bat with the intent that everyone now demands, you’re likely to end up with boom-or-bust numbers. People really need to start asking themselves what they’re asking for when they ask for “consistency” from T20 batters.
6.45pm India’s spinners have combined to take 24 wickets in this series, the most they’ve ever managed in a bilateral T20I series. Feels like they could be in for a bit of a challenge today, with the pitch seemingly likelier to help the seamers, and with the possibility of dew when India bowl later tonight. We shall see how that goes.
Jez: “Not wishing to be contrary, but Saqib did not have a great game the other day. An amazing first over, but his other three went for plenty, and he had nothing to counter Dube, Hardik while they made hay.”
Tiago : “I think the winning the toss gives England the slight edge in this match but it will come down to the dew factor in the second innings and whether the Indian spinners get any purchase off the surface.”
SMS: “Make or break match for Samson here!! He has had a poor series so far and another failure will mark the end of the road for a long time considering the competition!! ” — People really have short memories. He made three hundreds in his last five T20I innings before this series!
Jov: “Shame that Saqib Mahmood has made way. He was amazing in the Windies series and performed in the one match in this series, we could’ve rested Archer for him instead.”
6.30pm Toss time! SKY spins the coin, Buttler calls heads, and it’s heads. Ravi Shastri’s taking his time asking him if he wants to bat or bowl. England have chosen to bowl first. Mark Wood comes in, and Saqib Mahmood goes out. Buttler reveals his line-up by listing out “our four impact subs”.
SKY says “we wanted to bat first today”, but also adds that India are “hoping there’s no dew.” One change for India. Shami comes in for Arshdeep. No extra seamer then.
India: 1 Abhishek Sharma, 2 Sanju Samson (wk), 3 Suryakumar Yadav (capt), 4 Tilak Varma, 5 Rinku Singh, 6 Shivam Dube, 7 Hardik Pandya, 8 Axar Patel, 9 Ravi Bishnoi, 10 Mohammed Shami, 11 Varun Chakravarthy.
England: 1 Phil Salt (wk), 2 Ben Duckett, 3 Jos Buttler, 4 Harry Brook, 5 Liam Livingstone, 6 Jacob Bethell, 7 Jamie Overton, 8 Brydon Carse, 9 Jofra Archer, 10 Adil Rashid, 11 Mark Wood.
Sidd: “Arshdeep was 1 wicket away from 100 in T20Is!”
Kalps: “It’s baffling when you say that we don’t have extra seamer. We now have Dube 2.0 who ‘apparently’ can bowl 140kph now “
Abhijay: “Buttler listing out his 4 ‘impact subs’, lmao” — Ravi Shastri also mentioned something about match referees needing to do a lot of work nowadays when he introduced Javagal Srinath at the toss.
Ruchit: “@Jawahar Dew is certainly not over hyped. 2011 and 2023 WC finals are clear examples. But yes it is not such a big difference in T-20 giving the timings of the matches ! But in longer formats it is a dampener.”
Saini: “Who ll be ‘Impact Player’s today”
6.27pm There’s likely to be some help for the seamers today, according to the broadcasters’ pitch report. That’s often the case at the Wankhede. Will India play an extra quick?
6.15pm Our man S Sudarshanan is at the Wankhede, and he sets the scene for us:
“Pleasant evening in Mumbai. Crowd starting to build up. Plenty of people in nice and early, queuing up since about 4-4:30pm. The ground looks 25% full at the moment, expected to be full. Steady stream of people coming in.
“Bollywood actor Aamir Khan got the crowd going when he entered the ground. He walked the circumference of the ground from outside the boundary cushion, all the way from the entry next to Vijay Merchant Pavilion to below the media stand, to be part of the Star Sports Hindi show.”
He’s also kept an eye on England’s warm-ups: “Atkinson warming up full tilt. Archer bowled a bit of left-arm spin a while ago. Wood also warming up at the side with his entire left leg strapped and just ambled in to bowl some medium-pace. Nowhere near full-tilt.”
And he now trains his binoculars on India’s warm-ups: “Both Arshdeep and Shami warming up by bowling full tilt, as is Varun. Shami has knee cap/elastic crepe bandage on both knees.”
Vinod: “I am more excited of final round of Tata steel Chess, where 2 Indians fighting for the crowns.” — I’ve kept a keen eye on that tournament too, over the last couple of weeks, and so have my colleagues over at ESPN India.
Anant: “Expecting Sanju and SKY to fire today, been quiet all series , but can’t keep those two quiet for a long time.”
Afeef: “I’ve been satisfied with the scores in this series, so I’m ready to watch a high-scoring game today”
Jawahar: “Mumbai could be a wicket where each side could score over 200 runs. Dew is hyped and I feel any team winning the toss should set a big score and defend it.”
6.00pm Evening, everyone. The series is decided but that shouldn’t mean any shortage of spice in tonight’s game at the Wankhede. This contest has been closer than 3-1 would suggest, and England will want to end it with a scoreline better reflective of their competitiveness. India for their part could argue that it could well be 4-0 if not for an against-the-odds tenth-wicket stand in Rajkot, and will want to establish that they have, in fact, been the dominant side.
This hasn’t been a fest of hitting as pre-series predictions suggested, but that’s only because some of the bowling from both sides has been superb, and the conditions haven’t been as flat as expected. The way India responded to being three down after two overs in Pune, in fact, showed exactly how these two teams are geared to play: all intent, all the way. Mumbai’s pitches can offer something to the bowlers, as the one for the last T20I here in 2023 did, but they can often be extremely high-scoring, as was the case in the second-most-recent T20I here, way back in 2019. What will we see today? Will the batting riches of both these line-ups get the platform to unleash themselves fully?
A bit of early news. Shivam Dube has just said, in an interview with the broadcasters, that he’s “good to go” today, after having been subbed out of the fourth T20I with a concussion. That substitution raised a few eyebrows, not least those of England captain Jos Buttler, but there’s a nuanced way at looking at how concussion substitutions work, as Sidharth Monga explains.
On the England front, we’re hearing Saqib Mahmood, who ripped through India’s top order in Pune, might be sitting out this game, with Mark Wood set to return.