India v England ODI Series......Unfamiliar Territory




Starts Friday November 14th 03.30 GMT

Rajkot

Apart from the games at Bangalore and Delhi, the other 5 games in this series will be held at remote unfamiliar outposts of India, namely Guwahati, Cuttack, Kanpur, Indore and the setting for the first game, Rajkot.

The choice of venues caused concern to the ECB as they felt the long travelling and the slightly inferior facilities at these grounds compared with the more established venues could cause problems for the England Team.

I understand those concerns, however, India is a vast country and its good see the Indian team playing in all corners of the country and allowing some fans a rare glimpse of their heroes in the flesh.

India go into this series on a massive high. They have just regained the Border/Gavaskar trophy in an epic series against Australia and their confidence will be sky high.

One of India’s strengths and advantage over most other teams is their pool of experienced players for all formats of the game. In these days of wall to wall cricket, it’s crucial to have a squad of 20 internationally proven class players in order to give regular rest to some key players and avoid burn out and fatigue.

This strength in depth is demonstrated again as the test specialists Laxman and Dravid rest and recharge their batteries before the Tests against England next month. Tendulkar and Amit Mishra are also rested for the first 3 games of this series.

In their places come proven players in this ODI format that have themselves had a nice rest and are fully refreshed. Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Pragan Ojha and Yousef Pathan have featured in recent ODI series successes in Australia and Sri Lanka and they will be even more effective on home pitches.

Add in Sehwag and Gambhir at the top of the innings, Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma and Harbhjan Singh in the bowling department, and MS Dhoni as the Inspirational skipper and you get an idea of the enormous task facing England in this series.

This Indian team is a formidable unit at home and on sub continent pitches. Apart from the blip of losing 2-4 to Australia, they beat Pakistan 4-1 away and 3-2 at home, Sri Lanka 2-1 away and 6-1 at home, West Indies 3-1 and England 5-1 on their last visits.

They are a young side, led by a positive captain and they seem to be improving with each outing.

England too have made a change in their captaincy. Kevin Pietersen took over in all formats and has made a very encouraging start. He led England to victory in the final test against South Africa before overseeing an amazing 4-0 thrashing of the same team in the ODI series that followed.

The turnaround was amazing from earlier in the year when England lost their ODI series home and away against New Zealand 3-1.

There have been a couple of setbacks in last couple of weeks however with the loss of the Stanford Twenty20 game in humiliating fashion, and even more worryingly, they have just been skittled out for 98 by a weak Mumbai team in a warm up game.

Though these events will be a concern, they should not put too much emphasis on those games. One was in a different format played for millions and the pressures that went with it, the other was only a warm up and obviously the intensity levels were not as they will be for the real matches.

England will also be buoyed by the fact that they beat India in their last ODI series in England 4-3 and they will be looking for inspiration from that.

As well as Pietersens captaincy, the other main reasons for England’s improvement lately has been the return to form of Flintoff and Harmison as well as the arrival of a new all round talent that is Samit Patel.

The main problem for England though will be that these pitches will not be suitable for Harmison and Flintoff. They will be slow and low and spin will be far more effective. England have decent spin options with Samit Patel and Graeme Swann, but neither has much experience of bowling India against players that know a thing or two about facing spin bowling.

This ODI series, and the two Tests that follow will go a long way to telling us if the recent resurgence under Pietersen is a new dawn of success for England, or if that dawn was a false one.

Overall England have won just four out of their last fifteen ODI’s in India. To win this series, they need to win four from seven. Though they will give it a good shot and no doubt have their moments, I really cannot see how they can win four games in this series.

This Indian team is playing too much good cricket, have too many key players in good form and they have too much experience in these conditions to slip up more then once or twice at most.

England lost the last series here 5-1. I think they are staring at another comprehensive defeat and will do well to keep it to a 5-2 loss this time and so my suggested bets for this series are:

In the outright series win market:

BACK India for 5 points @ 1.53 888sport

In the series correct score market:

BACK India to win 7-0 for 1 point @ 17.0 at Ladbrokes
BACK India to win 6-1 for 2 points @ 7.0 at Ladbrokes
BACK India to win 5-2 for 2 points @ 7.0 at Ladbrokes

Join me, and though the territory might be unfamiliar, the end result won’t be.

Bigjoe