India bowl, leave out Sooryavanshi for Abhishek and Samson

Bumrah and Varun return to join Arshdeep as specialist bowlers in the bowling attack

Toss India chose to bowl vs Afghanistan

Shreyas Iyer won his tenth toss in 11 T20Is as captain, and asked the "hosts" Afghanistan to bat first in Delhi. This was the first time Afghanistan were hosting India in international cricket, the only Full Member team they are yet to beat.

Winning his 10th toss in a row was slightly easier than deciding the opening pair with Sanju Samson, Abhishek Sharma and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi in contention. Iyer went with Samson and Abhishek, marking a return for Samson, Player of the Tournament at the World Cup but left out for Sooryavanshi for two matches in England, and then not sent to Zimbabwe altogether. In Samson's absence, Sooryavanshi had been the Player of the Series in Zimbabwe.

India also welcomed back Jasprit Bumrah and Varun Chakravarthy to join Arshdeep Singh in the attack. The rest of the bowling responsibilities were to be shared between the allrounders Axar Patel, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Shivam Dube. That meant Washington Sundar missed out. In Zimbabwe, India had played a specialist bowler at No. 8, but here they went back to prioritising batting depth.

Playing T20Is for the first time since the World Cup in February this year, Afghanistan had a new captain in Ibrahim Zadran but largely a similar set-up to seven months ago. The returning Naveen-ul-Haq was not deemed match-ready. That being the case, Afghanistan were unchanged from their first-choice XI during the World Cup, leaving Azmatullah Omarzai as the second seamer behind Fazalhaq Farooqi.

Afghanistan 1 Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), 2 Ibrahim Zadran (capt), 3 Gulbadin Naib, 4 Sediqullah Atal, 5 Darwish Rasooli, 6 Azmatullah Omarzai, 7 Mohammad Nabi, 8 Rashid Khan, 9 Mujeeb Ur Rahman, 10 Noor Ahmad, 11 Fazalhaq Farooqi

India 1 Abhishek Sharma, 2 Sanju Samson (wk), 3 Ishan Kishan, 4 Shreyas Iyer (capt), 5 Tilak Varma, 6 Axar Patel, 7 Shivam Dube, 8 Nitish Kumar Reddy, 9 Arshdeep Singh, 10 Jasprit Bumrah, 11 Varun Chakravarthy