Sports Desk:

England won the toss and decided to bowl first in the World Cup match against Afghanistan at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Sunday where star batsman Ben Stokes was again absent.

Stokes has still not recovered from the hip injury which kept him out of the first two games, a defeat to New Zealand and victory over Bangladesh.

England are unchanged from the side which defeated Bangladesh by 137 runs last time out.

“It looks a pretty good batting wicket,” said England captain Jos Buttler.

“We’re playing a talented, tough team but we’ll focus on ourselves. We improved a lot from the first game to the second game.”

Afghanistan have suffered heavy defeats in both of their opening games, by six wickets to Bangladesh and by eight wickets to India.

They have made one change with Najibullah Zadran losing his place in the middle order to Ikram Alikhil.

The two countries have only met twice before with England winning convincingly on both occasions — by nine wickets at the 2015 World Cup in Sydney and 150 runs in Manchester four years ago.

Teams

England: Jonny Bairstow, Dawid Malan, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Jos Buttler (capt/wk), Liam Livingstone, Sam Curran, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood, Adil Rashid, Reece Topley

Afghanistan: Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Ibrahim Zadran, Rahmat Shah, Hashmatullah Shahidi (capt), Azmatullah Omarzai, Mohammad Nabi, Ikram Alikhil (wkt), Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Naveen-ul-Haq, Fazalhaq Farooqi

Umpires: Rod Tucker (AUS) and Sharfuddoula (BAN)

TV Umpire: Paul Reiffel (AUS)

Match Referee: Jeff Crowe (NZL)