England won the toss and decided to bowl first in the World Cup encounter against Afghanistan at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Sunday.

Stokes has not yet recovered from the hip injury that caused him to miss the first two matches, a loss to New Zealand and a win against Bangladesh.

England have not made any changes to the team that defeated Bangladesh by 137 runs in their previous match.

“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 lost both of their opening matches, to Bangladesh by six wickets and to India by eight wickets.

They have made one change, with Ikram Alikhil replacing Najibullah Zadran in the middle order.

The two nations have only met twice in the past, with England prevailing decisively both times — by nine wickets at the 2015 World Cup in Sydney and by 150 runs in Manchester four years prior.

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