Australia selected three specialist spinners and retained skipper Pat Cummins as the lone pace bowler Friday in a desperate bid to pull level in the four-match series after a big loss to India in the first test last week.
Cummins gave his new-look attack a chance to see what the Indian bowlers can do on the wicket after winning the toss and opting to bat.
Left-arm spinner Matthew Kuhnemann earned a surprising test debut at the expense of pace bowler Scott Boland in one of two changes to Australia’s starting XI.
Travis Head returned to the middle-order after being surprisingly omitted last week, taking the place of Matt Renshaw. Head is also likely to bowl his part-time off-spin to support specialist spinners Nathan Lyon, Todd Murphy and Kuhnemann.
Shreyas Iyer returns in place of Suryakumar Yadav in the only change to the India lineup that won the first test by an innings and 132 runs inside three days at Nagpur.
Cheteshwar Pujara is playing in his 100th test for India. The 35-year-old batter made his debut in 2010 at Bengaluru against Australia and has scored 7,021 runs at average 44.15, including 19 hundreds.
The pitch at the Arun Jaitley Stadium is of black soil, and while turn is expected from early on, it could be slower paced than in Nagpur.
Smog in Delhi could be an issue during the game with surface wind dying down ahead of the scheduled start.
Lineups:
India: Rohit Sharma (captain), KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KS Bharat, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj.
Australia: David Warner, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith, Travis Head, Peter Handscomb, Alex Carey, Pat Cummins (captain), Todd Murphy, Nathan Lyon, Matt Kuhnemann.
