Rohit Sharma loses toss again, equals Brian Lara’s record; check out playing 11s – Firstpost

New Zealand won the toss and elected to bat first against India
in the final of the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium on Sunday. In what has become an unfortunate pattern for Indian skipper Rohit Sharma, he extended his streak of losing the toss to the 12th consecutive time.

Rohit’s toss misfortune has now entered the record books, as he has equalled former West Indies great Brian Lara’s streak of 12 consecutive toss defeats in ODIs. The Indian captain last won a toss in the semi-final of the 2023 ODI World Cup against the same opposition, New Zealand, at the Wankhede Stadium.

Meanwhile, India as a team have now lost 15 tosses in a row, a streak that includes previous outings under Jasprit Bumrah and Suryakumar Yadav.

Rohit Sharma’s take on losing the toss

“We’ve been here enough, batted first and bowled first, don’t really mind batting second. It hasn’t changed much, we’ve chased and won as well. It does give you a lot of confidence, takes the toss away from the game. At the end of the day, what matters is how well you want to play. That’s what we’ve spoken about in the dressing room, not to worry about the toss and to just play well, that’s what we’ve done and we have to do today as well. New Zealand have been a very good team over the past so many years, they tend to play good cricket in ICC tournaments. The challenge for us is to play well against them now. Same team for us.”

India vs New Zealand Final: Playing 11s

India XI: Rohit Sharma (c), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Axar Patel, KL Rahul (w), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Shami, Kuldeep Yadav, Varun Chakaravarthy.

New Zealand XI: Will Young, Rachin Ravindra, Kane Williamson, Daryl Mitchell, Tom Latham (w), Glenn Phillips, Michael Bracewell, Mitchell Santner (c), Kyle Jamieson, William O’Rourke, Nathan Smith.