Saturday, November 22, 2008

4th ODI - India v England

Sunday 23rd November, 2008

Time: 14:00 local, 08:30 GMT

Venue: M Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore

England were thrashed in Rajkot and comprehensively beaten in Indore but improved their performance in Kanpur. The gap between the teams has narrowed with every game but, at 3-0 to India, the series has reached a stage where England have to win in Bangalore to keep it alive.

Team news

Tendulkar's return is a certainty but what is less clear is whom he is going to replace. Rohit Sharma's scores in this series are 11 not out, 3 and 28 and it's likely that he will make way for Tendulkar. Gambhir will drop down to No. 3, giving India's top order the look it had when winning the tri-series in Australia earlier this year. Ishant had a poor game in Kanpur, conceding 12 of India's 17 extras, but India are unlikely to change their bowling attack.

India (probable): 1 Virender Sehwag, 2 Sachin Tendulkar, 3 Gautam Gambhir, 4 Yuvraj Singh, 5 Suresh Raina, 6 Mahendra Singh Dhoni (capt & wk), 7 Yusuf Pathan, 8 Harbhajan Singh, 9 Zaheer Khan, 10 Ishant Sharma, 11 Munaf Patel.

England made several changes to their batting order in the last game in Kanpur, promoting Ravi Bopara to open, Pietersen to No. 3, and dropping Owais Shah and Matt Prior to Nos 6 and 8. They are likely to persist with that plan after the Bopara-Ian Bell combination produced 79 runs in quick time. They could make a change to the bowling attack, however, replacing the out-of-form James Anderson with Steve Harmison.

England (probable): 1 Ravi Bopara, 2 Ian Bell, 3 Kevin Pietersen (capt), 4 Paul Collingwood, 5 Andrew Flintoff, 6 Owais Shah, 7 Samit Patel, 8 Matt Prior (wk), 9 Stuart Broad, 10 Graeme Swann, 11 Steve Harmison.


Pitch and conditions

Bangalore has had daily showers in the run-up to the match and the meteorological department has predicted moderate to heavy rain over the weekend. The pitch at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, however, is expected to be full of runs. "It's a sporting wicket, and should assist the batsmen more than the bowlers," the curator Narayan Raju said. "The ball will come on to the bat nicely." In the last ODI at this venue, in September 2007, Australia scored 307 for 7 before rain interrupted play shortly into the Indian innings and forced the match to be abandoned.

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