Indian bowlers make it tough for England |
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Thursday April 6, 09:16 AM
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New Delhi: England won the toss and elected to bat in the fourth One-Day at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Kochi.
Andrew Strauss and Matthew Prior opened the innings for the visitors but failed to give a good start as England lost both its openers by the sixth over.
Irfan Pathan, who opened the bowling for India along with S Sreesanth, struck in his second over to send back Strauss off a good length delivery that trapped him plumb in front. Strauss made seven.
The other opener Prior was just opening up his shoulders to step up the scoring rate when Sreesanth, who was hit for a four off the previous ball, had him caught by Mahendra Singh Dhoni behind the stumps.
After the fall of two quick wickets Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood decided that attack was the best policy of defence.
Pietersen, who missed the third ODI at Goa due to an upset stomach, made his intentions very clear by hitting Pathan for three four in one over.
He then smashed a Sreesanth delivery over the fine leg fence for a six to bring up the 50 for England in just 7.5 overs.
The duo batted with an aggression to take their team to the 100-run mark in the 18th over.
Pietersen brought his seventh ODI 50 and the second against India off 54 balls when he guided a Yuvraj Singh delivery behind sqaure on the leg side for a single.
However, Yuraj too a brilliant catch diving to his left off his own bowling after Collingwood failed to keep the ball down that took-off after taking the leading edge of his bat.
Collingwood batted for 48 ball to make 36 that included four hits to the boundary.
The fall of the third wicket brought Andrew Flintoff to the crease and he, too, seemed in mood to take the Indian bowlers to the cleaners.
Pietersen continued to torment the hosts hitting Virender Sehwag for a four and a six of two consecutive balls.
India finally managed to send Pietersen back into the pavilion when he tried to hit a Harbhajan Singh delivery out of the ground but managed to sky it behind the square-leg where Yuvraj took and easy catch.
Pietersen knocked off 77 runs in his 82 ball stay at the crease hitting six boundaries and two sixes.
Soon it was the turn of Flintoff to go back when he was caught by his Indian counterpart off the bowling of Yuvraj after making 12 runs.
Vikram Solanki was the next to go as the Indian bowlers found England batsmen an easy target.
Solanki was bowled by Romesh Powar when the batsman tried to defend a flighted delivery but the ball turned in sharply to crash into the stumps.
India made one chance bringing in local boy Sreesanth in place of Munaf Patel.
on the other hand England, who have to win the Kochi ODI if they are to have any chance of making a comeback in the series. made three changes.
They brought in Kevin Pietersen, Matthew Hoggard and Gareth Batty in place of Owais Shah, Liam Plunkett and Sajid Mohammed.
Team:
India: Rahul Dravid (C), Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Mohammed Kaif, Suresh Raina, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Irfan Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, Ramesh Powar, Ajit Agarkar and S Sreesanth.
England: Andrew Flintoff (C), Andrew Strauss, Matthew Prior, Kevin Pietersen, Geraint Jones, Paul Collingwood, Ian Blackwell, James Anderson, Matthew Hoggard, Vikram Solanki, Gareth Batty.
Umpires: Rudy Koertzen and K Hariharan.
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