Zimbabwe win toss and bowling first against England in their first test in 22 years

NOTTINGHAM, England (AP) — Zimbabwe won the toss against England and chose to bowl first in their first cricket test in 22 years on Thursday at Trent Bridge.

The one-off four-day match will start under overcast skies. Rain is in the forecast in the weekend.

England’s Joe Root may have a chance on Thursday to become the fifth batter to reach 13,000 test runs. He needs only 28 more to join Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis and Rahul Dravid.

Fast bowler Sam Cook will make his test debut at 27 for England in an inexperienced attack. Fellow seamer Josh Tongue reappears after two years for his third test.

Zimbabwe lost a warmup match against a County Select XI in Leicester last week and has brought in batting allrounder Sikandar Raza, after he was on duty for Lahore Qalandars in the Pakistan Super League. Raza will also provide the spin option after Zimbabwe chose four seamers.

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Lineups:

England: Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ben Stokes (captain), Jamie Smith, Gus Atkinson, Sam Cook, Josh Tongue, Shoaib Bashir.

Zimbabwe: Brian Bennett, Ben Curran, Craig Ervine (captain), Sean Williams, Sikandar Raza, Wessley Madhevere, Tafadzwa Tsiga, Richard Ngarava, Blessing Muzarabani, Tanaka Chivanga, Victor Nyauchi.

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AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket