India bowl, pick Kuldeep and Samson in the XI

India won their first toss in 16 attempts across formats, and chose to bowl first in their Asia Cup opener against UAE. Suryakumar Yadav, the India captain, felt there was a chance of dew later in the match on a humid evening in Dubai.

Muhammad Waseem, the UAE captain, said he would have preferred to bowl first too, and expected a bit of early help for the seamers.

India sprang a few surprises with their selection. They retained Sanju Samson as wicketkeeper, despite the return of Shubman Gill to the top of the order displacing him into a middle-order role more familiar to Jitesh Sharma. They also picked both their wristspinners in Varun Chakravarthy and Kuldeep Yadav.

This left the issue of whether they would prioritise depth in their batting or their seam attack. They went with the former, picking the allrounder Shivam Dube rather than a second frontline quick in Arshdeep Singh or Harshit Rana. Jasprit Bumrah starts as the only specialist quick, with Hardik Pandya expected to partner him with the new ball.

UAE made one change to the XI that played their last match, the four-wicket loss to Afghanistan in the recent home tri-series, bringing in the offspin-bowling allrounder Dhruv Parashar for the legspinner Muhammad Farooq

India: 1 Abhishek Sharma, 2 Shubman Gill, 3 Suryakumar Yadav (capt), 4 Tilak Varma, 5 Sanju Samson (wk), 6 Shivam Dube, 7 Hardik Pandya, 8 Axar Patel, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Varun Chakravarthy, 11 Jasprit Bumrah

UAE: 1 Muhammad Zohaib, 2 Muhammad Waseem (capt), 3 Asif Khan, 4 Alishan Sharafu, 5 Rahul Chopra (wk), 6 Dhruv Parashar, 7 Harshit Kaushik, 8 Haider Ali, 9 Muhammad Rohid, 10 Junaid Siddique, 11 Simranjeet Singh