From Mountains to Plains — India and Afghanistan Shift to Lucknow for a Second ODI Where the Audition Gets Louder and Gurbaz Demands a Rematch

If Dharamsala was a venue that shaped the first ODI through its altitude and mountain breeze, Lucknow is its polar opposite. The BRSABV Ekana Cricket Stadium sits on the Gangetic plain, where June temperatures routinely cross 42°C and the humidity wraps around everything — players, ball, fielding effort, decision-making. The ground, built for the 2017 IPL and expanded since, is a modern colosseum with a surface that has historically favoured batters through the middle overs and rewarded pace only in the first hour when the ball is new and the morning moisture has not yet burned off.

In ODI cricket, Lucknow produces high-scoring encounters. The outfield is fast, the boundaries are reachable, and the pitch — a red-soil surface that starts true and stays true — means that batters who survive the first ten overs can cash in through the middle passage. Dew arrives after sunset, and in a day-night ODI starting at 2:30 PM, the second innings will be played under lights with a ball that becomes progressively harder to grip. Teams batting second here carry an advantage — the surface eases, the dew lubricates the outfield, and the spinners who controlled the middle overs in the first innings find their revolutions sliding off the ball's surface. The toss, in Lucknow, is not everything. But it is close.

India's seven-wicket victory at Dharamsala was comprehensive in outcome but incomplete in what it revealed. Rain reduced the match to 25 overs per side, which compressed the contest into a format closer to a T20 than a fifty-over examination. Gurnoor Brar's debut was the headline — the left-arm seamer from Punjab, with his ability to swing the new ball and vary his pace through the middle overs, announced himself with the kind of performance that turns a squad player into a selection conversation. Shubman Gill's unbeaten 84 in the chase was the innings of a captain who understood the equation and executed it with the precision that has defined his white-ball batting since he took the armband.

But the question that Dharamsala's truncated format could not fully answer is the one that hangs over this series: who bats at No. 3 for India in ODI cricket when Virat Kohli is absent? The hamstring injury that Kohli sustained in the IPL final has opened a position that has been his private office for the better part of fifteen years, and the audition is between three candidates with very different profiles. Ishan Kishan scored a brisk 34 off 22 in the first ODI — useful in a shortened chase, but not the kind of innings that answers whether he can occupy the crease for thirty overs in a full fifty-over contest. KL Rahul's composure and Yashasvi Jaiswal's flair remain options, and Lucknow's full fifty overs — assuming the weather cooperates — will provide the examination that Dharamsala's rain denied.

The absence of Hardik Pandya (quadriceps) alongside Kohli means India's middle-order balance is improvised rather than settled. The bowling, with Bumrah rested and Siraj not selected, is in the hands of a new generation — and whether Brar, Prince Yadav, and the existing quicks can replicate Dharamsala's control on a flatter Lucknow surface is the bowling question that the second ODI must answer.

There is a particular cruelty in scoring a century of extraordinary quality and having it amount to nothing. Rahmanullah Gurbaz's 100 off 48 balls at Dharamsala — eight fours, eight sixes, an innings played with a violence that made some of the finest bowlers in world cricket look ordinary — was one of the great ODI powerplay performances of recent years. That it came in a rain-affected match, in a DLS-adjusted chase that India navigated comfortably, meant that Gurbaz's brilliance was a footnote rather than a headline. He will not want that to happen twice.

At Lucknow, Afghanistan have the opportunity that Dharamsala's weather denied them: a full fifty overs to build an innings, to let Gurbaz's aggression at the top give way to Ibrahim Zadran's accumulation in the middle, to allow Hashmatullah Shahidi and Rahmat Shah the time to construct the kind of partnership that gives the lower order something to accelerate from. Afghanistan's batting is at its most dangerous when it bats for forty overs rather than twenty-five — the depth that looked fragile in a truncated format has more room to breathe in a full game.

Rashid Khan's role in Lucknow could be pivotal. On a surface that will not turn extravagantly but will slow through the middle overs as the pitch dries under the afternoon sun, Rashid's ten overs between overs 15 and 40 are the phase where Afghanistan can strangle India's middle order. If he bowls with the economy that has made him the most feared white-ball spinner in the world — under four an over, with the googly finding edges and the wrong'un beating outside edges — Afghanistan can contain India to a total that their batting, led by Gurbaz's pyrotechnics, can chase. Fazalhaq Farooqi with the new ball remains the other weapon — his left-arm swing troubled India's top order at Dharamsala, and if the early-morning moisture at Lucknow offers him even a fraction of assistance, the powerplay could once again be Afghanistan's best phase.

India could retain much of the Dharamsala XI, with the fifty-over format providing a fuller canvas. Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill should open — Rohit's experience against spin in the middle overs and Gill's form as captain and top-scorer make them the settled pair. The No. 3 position is where the selectors' thinking will become clearest: Ishan Kishan, who batted with intent in the first ODI, might retain the spot — but KL Rahul's ability to bat long and absorb pressure in a full fifty-over innings makes him a strong candidate for the role that Kohli has owned. Rishabh Pant in the middle order provides the left-handed counterattack, and the lower-order balance — Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar or Axar Patel — gives India the all-round depth that allows six bowling options.

The bowling could see Gurnoor Brar retain his place after a strong debut, alongside Prince Yadav or whoever shared new-ball duties at Dharamsala. Kuldeep Yadav's wrist spin in the middle overs, Jadeja's left-arm control, and a fifth bowling option from the all-rounders should give India the variety to contain Afghanistan across fifty overs — though on Lucknow's flatter surface, the margins for error are thinner than Dharamsala's swing-friendly conditions.

Afghanistan will almost certainly build around the same core. Gurbaz and Ibrahim Zadran at the top — the combination that has made Afghanistan's ODI batting among the most watchable in the world. Hashmatullah Shahidi and Rahmat Shah provide the middle-overs solidity, with Azmatullah Omarzai's all-round ability in the lower middle order. Rashid Khan as captain and frontline spinner, Mujeeb Ur Rahman's mystery, and the new-ball pair of Fazalhaq Farooqi and Naveen-ul-Haq give Afghanistan a bowling attack that, on a day where everything clicks, can trouble any lineup. The question is whether their middle-order batting — the phase where Dharamsala's collapse accelerated — can hold together for the overs 15–40 passage that full ODIs demand.