Another low scorer on cards

LOW SCORES were a common feature of the first two ODIs between Indian and England and, it seems, the trend would continue in the third one-dayer to be played in Margao on Monday.

Though the English team will probably enjoy their stay here, a look at the wicket suggests that the batsmen would have their task cut out. The stadium, with a capacity of 27,000 and mostly used for football, looks perfect but the wicket has cracks aplenty and the newly laid strip appears to be terribly under-watered. "We did not water it much," said an official of the Goa Cricket Association (GCA). "We went by the weather forecast, which indicated that it would rain prior to the match but it hasn't rained much so far."

In an interesting twist, Suryakant Naik, Chairman of GCA Pitch and Ground Committee, however, denied that the pitch had been under-watered for any reason. Naik was non-committal about the nature of the wicket too, restricting himself to saying, "The cracks will vanish before the match starts as we are watering the wicket. "This will be the first game on the newly-laid track, prepared in two months under the guidance of P Viswanathan of the BCCI Pitches Committee, so it is very difficult to predict how it will behave."

Breaking the jinx Will India break the jinx in Goa? Margao hasn't exactly been happy hunting ground for India. The hosts have failed to win a single match in their previous four attempts here -- the last loss coming against Australia. However, with India on quite an unbelievable roll --- even creating a world record for successful consecutive chases in Faridabad on Friday --- this is their best chance to rewrite the record books here.