Big picture: No time to process series losses for England, India
England are still processing their Test series loss to New Zealand and the sudden retirement of Ben Stokes. Half of them are wondering if the rest of the leadership should go with him. The other half is hoping they do.
India have too often veered between the spectacular and the insipid under their leadership. At the Champions Trophy and T20 World Cup, they lost only one match, but they had their 12-year winning streak in home Test series broken with two whitewashes, and their T20I unbeaten series has just been stopped by a 2-0 blanking from Ireland.
Neither of these teams has the time to sit back and analyse. While India will get just one training session, England will have to squeeze theirs in the afternoon on a day they travel from Nottingham to Durham. Then they turn up on July 1 to start the five-match T20I series, which ironically gets the biggest viewership but least attention from those involved. Whether you take it seriously or not, this series is likely to be the most-watched event of the English summer.
England's last two encounters against India in this format have been two World Cup semi-final defeats and a 4-1 series defeat in India, who, despite the series defeat in Ireland, remain a formidable T20 team even when missing Jasprit Bumrah, who was crucial to their semi-final defence of 253, which got too close for comfort in Mumbai.
What remains true of these two sides is that there is plenty of firepower in their ranks to take us back to high-scoring times on more standardised T20 pitches. If not, it will be a big test of both side's big hitters' adaptability.
Form guide
India LLWWW (last five completed T20Is, most recent first)
England LWWWW
In the spotlight: Shreyas Iyer and Harry Brook
Both leaders for the future, both with their own detractors. Shreyas Iyer's return into the international side straight as a captain was not universally liked. It was a bold move that involved a World Cup-winning captain for the first time in international cricket. A series defeat to Ireland in his first assignment has left the spotlight firmly on him.
England's T20I captain Harry Brook was also being groomed as the next Test captain when they overlooked him while Ben Stokes was suspended during the series against New Zealand. He is back as the captain, a vacancy for a full-time Test captain has also opened up, and a series win here will go a long way in removing doubts around him.
Team news: England more settled than India?
All of a sudden England are looking more settled than the world champions. They named their XI a day out, with Jofra Archer and Josh Tongue rested following their involvement in the Trent Bridge Test. Saqib Mahmood and Luke Wood come in as the only changes from the teams' meeting in the T20 World Cup semi-final (Jamie Overton is not in the squad through injury).
England (probable) 1 Phil Salt, 2 Jos Butler (wk), 3 Harry Brook (capt.), 4 Jacob Bethell, 5 Tom Banton, 6 Sam Curran, 7 Will Jacks, 8 Liam Dawson, 9 Adil Rashid, 10 Luke Wood, 11 Saqib Mahmood
India will be buoyed with the return of Varun Chakravarthy, but that will mean making the difficult call of leaving out one of Arshdeep Singh, Harshit Rana and Prince Yadav. Going by the public utterances from the team management, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi might still have to wait for a debut.
India (probable) 1 Sanju Samson/Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, 2 Abhishek Sharma, 3 Ishan Kishan (wk), 4 Shreyas Iyer (capt.), 5 Tilak Varma, 6 Suryansh Shedge, 7 Shivam Dube, 8 Axar Patel, 9 Arshdeep Singh, 10 Harshit Rana, 11 Prince Yadav/Varun Chakravarthy
Pitch and conditions
The pitch in Chester-Le-Street this year has been a mixed bag in this year's Blast games. Two middling scores have been defended successfully, one has been chased down, but the latest match, a 10-over affair, was 128 plays 130. There is a drizzle around on Wednesday evening.
Stats and trivia
At 4037 runs, Jos Buttler is one of the only four players to have gone past 4000 in T20Is. Babar Azam leads with 4596.
Adil Rashid, on 163 right now, needs three wickets to reach No. 2 on T20I wicket-takers' list. Rashid Khan leads the table with 193.
