Birmingham, Sept 1:
An unassailable lead in their pocket, India would look to clinch the one-day series against England by putting up another dominating display when the two sides square off in the fourth cricket one-dayer here tomorrow.
The visitors have taken an unassailable 2-0 lead in the series after 133-run (D/L) and six-wicket wins in Cardiff and Nottingham in the second and third ODIs respectively. This was after the first ODI at Bristol was abandoned due to incessant rain.
At Edgbaston then, the Men in Blue will be hoping to wrap things up with one match remaining in the series. Their confidence will stem from the simple fact that England have been unable to challenge them in the two matches played so far.
On current evidence, in limited-overs cricket, the hosts appear to be a completely different animal that takes the field in the Test arena. Like every other team they too are building up to the 2015 World Cup in Australia-New Zealand, but they are beset with problems.
A lot of quarters have criticised Alastair Cook’s batting at the top of the order but along with Alex Hales, he has put up two fifty partnerships in two games.
That isn’t the trouble though. His captaincy has been under the scanner and while the 3-1 series win helped silence his critics, even his closest supporters — read Graeme Swann — do not believe that he should lead his country in the World Cup. However, that is done and dusted, he will do so, and England’s problems mount from there.
Cook’s captaincy is quite unimaginative in the sense that he doesn’t feel the need to play two off-spinners in the same eleven.
This conventional thinking has always been England’s downfall in limited-overs cricket, and that is the summation of their problems.
At Nottingham, for example, they should have attacked Suresh Raina-Ambati Rayudu when they were deployed by Dhoni within the first 20 overs of the English innings.
The score read 80-odd for 1 wicket at that juncture and any other team would have looked to murder the Indian bowling. Such attacking intent is missing from England.
It is perhaps the reason why they haven’t won anything of value in this 50-over format, leave alone a single ICC trophy. Their last major ODI win was in New Zealand in early 2013 which was quickly avenged when the Kiwis won in England later that summer.
Since then they have beaten West Indies (earlier in 2014) and won one-off matches against Ireland and Scotland. They have been drubbed twice by Australia and beaten by Sri Lanka at home in this interim, so much so that their final appearance in the 2013 Champions Trophy looks like a happy aberration.
Does this mean India’s upswing in form in last two ODIs is a miscalculation? It could be, since this same team struggled a lot in South Africa and New Zealand, wherein conditions were more similar to the ones that will be prevailing in the quadrennial event next year.
All these questions and many more are waiting to be answered.
Teams (from):
India: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (c & wk), Shikhar Dhawan, Murali Vijay, Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, Suresh Raina, Ambati Rayudu, Stuart Binny, Sanju Samson, R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Karn Sharma, Mohit Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Mohammad Shami, Dhawal Kulkarni, Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
England: Alastair Cook (c), Moeen Ali, James Anderson, Gary Ballance, Ian Bell, Jos Buttler (wk), Steven Finn, Harry Gurney, Alex Hales, Chris Jordan, Eoin Morgan, Joe Root, Ben Stokes, James Tredwell, Chris Woakes.
Match starts at: 3pm IST. (PTI)
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