Team India have been fairly successful in the Champions Trophy 2025 so far. They have successfully made it to the semifinals without even playing their final group stage match yet. They bagged wins against Bangladesh and Pakistan pretty easily in their first two matches and it will be interesting to see how they fare against the Kiwis.
However, despite being successful in their first two matches, it seems like Gautam Gambhir and Rohit Sharma will do some big rotation in their team for the third match and it seems imminent. Although team India was successful in their first two matches, there was some buzz around some decisions regarding the playing XI and that will reportedly be addressed ahead of the third match.
The first big change will be Arshdeep Singh coming in instead of Harshit Rana. Arshdeep Singh is hands down India’s best fast bowler currently for the limited overs, after Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami and is also extremely experienced. He is India’s highest wicket taker in the T20 format and was also the highest wicket taker in the most recent edition of the Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy.
However, Gambhir had reportedly chosen Harshit Rana over him because he bats better than Arshdeep. It is highly likely that Arshdeep will replace Rana for the match against New Zealand.
The next big change will be replacing Kuldeep Yadav with Varun Chakravarthy. It will be a like-for-like change. As Varun Chakravarthy has somewhat more mystery element to him as he is a farely younger spinner, it will probably be more advantageous for India. Rishabh Pant is also likely to replace KL Rahul for the third match.
It will be really interesting to see whether these changes are applied, and if they are, whether they are kept for the semis as well.
