England have announced their playing XI against India for the 1st T20I which is poised to be played at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on Wednesday, January 22. Young sensation Jacob Bethell has been named in the playing XI alongside speedster Gus Atkinson while Jos Buttler will lead the England side against the Men In Blue.

Atkinson will share the bowling responsibility with Jofra Archer, Jamie Overton and Mark Wood. RCB batter Phil Salt is expected to open the batting with Ben Duckett while skipper Buttler will have the assistance of Harry Brook and Liam Livingstone in the middle order.

England have emerged victorious in 11 out of 24 matches and managed to win five out of 11 games on Indian soil in the shortest format. India got the better of the Three Lions by 68 runs when these two teams faced each other last time in the T20 World Cup semifinal in Guyana last year.

Captain Buttler insisted they will be concentrating on building bonding among the players during the tour. England haven't had the best in white ball format in the last couple of years.

As quoted by Cricbuzz he said, "(The focus is) to obviously build that coach-captain alliance. Obviously it's not a new set-up because Baz [McCullum] has been around for a while and obviously there's a lot of players in this squad that have been with him in the Test set-up for a number of years already. So, yeah, just looking forward to building that relationship in the white-ball set-up. It's going to be a great series against a really top side in their own conditions."

Ben Duckett, Phil Salt (WK), Jos Buttler (Captain), Harry Brook, Liam Livingstone, Jacob Bethell, Jamie Overton, Gus Atkinson, Jofra Archer, Adil Rashid, Mark Wood

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