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World's two top-ranked teams, England and India, meet at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad for the fifth time in eight nights. India, after losing the series opener by eight wickets, have fought back twice to level the series 2-2. Riding their thrilling 8-run win on Thursday, Virat Kohli's fearless India take the field knowing well enough that a series defeat will prove detrimental to their ICC T20 World Cup plans, scheduled to be held later in the year in India. For England, a win will only be an extension of their domination in the shortest format of the game. India last lost a T20 series in 2019, against Australia. A win against England tonight will make it six on the trot and seventh in eight. Interestingly, England are also undefeated in eight series, with their last defeat coming against India in 2018, a 2-1 result in favour of the visitors. Expect another thriller at Motera tonight as India sweat on their opening combination of Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul but have enough backup in an Ishan Kishan and Suryakumar Yadav. Follow live cricket scores of IND vs ENG, fifth T20 here.
6:38 PM IST: Virat Kohli will open for India, along with Rohit Sharma. KL Rahul out, T Natarajan in for him as India target better balance. England are unchanged.
Here are the playing XIs:
India: Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli (c), Suryakumar Yadav, Rishabh Pant (wk), Shreyas Iyer, Hardik Pandya, Shardul Thakur, Washington Sundar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Rahul Chahar, T Natarajan.
England: Jason Roy, Jos Buttler (wk), Dawid Malan, Jonny Bairstow, Eoin Morgan (c), Ben Stokes, Sam Curran, Chris Jordan, Jofra Archer, Adil Rashid, Mark Wood.
6:32 PM IST: "Heads again," said match referee Javvgal Srinath and England win the toss. They bowl first.
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