India opt to bowl against Australia in T20 opener

India skipper Suryakumar Yadav won the toss and elected to field against Australia in the opening match of a Twenty20 series on Thursday, four days after the two teams met in the one-day World Cup final.

Australia beat India to lift their sixth ODI World Cup title on Sunday and a few of their winning players have stayed back to play in the five-match series starting in Visakhapatnam.

The matches kick-start preparations for next year's T20 World Cup in June.

Suryakumar and wicketkeeper-batsman Ishan Kishan were the only two Indian players from their ODI World Cup team, which came into the final undefeated only to lose by six wickets in Ahmedabad.

Australia, led by Matthew Wade, have rested their ODI stars -- including Travis Head, Glenn Maxwell and Adam Zampa -- as they plan ahead to the shorter format showpiece event to be held in the West Indies and the United States.

India and Australia had also faced each other in a three-match series in September ahead of the World Cup, also in India, which the hosts won 2-1.

Teams

India: Ruturaj Gaikwad, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ishan Kishan (wk), Suryakumar Yadav (capt), Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Axar Patel, Ravi Bishnoi, Arshdeep Singh, Mukesh Kumar, Prasidh Krishna

Australia: Matthew Short, Steven Smith, Josh Inglis, Aaron Hardie, Marcus Stoinis, Tim David, Matthew Wade (capt, wk), Sean Abbott, Nathan Ellis, Jason Behrendorff, Tanveer Sangha