Rajkot (Gujarat), Nov 13 (ANI): India and England cricket teams expressed confidence on Thursday, of performing well, a day before the first match of the seven-match one-day series between them.
India will look to adapt quickly after completing a 2-0 test series victory over Australia four days ago.
Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni said in Rajkot, where the fist match would be played that players should learn to switch over from the test series mode to one-day series mode.
“It’’s really tough but as an International cricketer you have to do it. But it’’s important whatever series you are playing, even if there’’s no gap between the two series, you have to switch from a test playing mode to one day playing mode. And one of the good things is we have, is that half the side doesn”t play test game so I can say its good right now. But I can say if the same side plays the test cricket as well as the one-day cricket then it’’s a bit difficult to switch over to one-day mode especially if you have just three days in between. But as I said we are international cricketers, we are professionals, so we should do it more often,” said Dhoni.
Indian fast bowler Ishant Sharma was ruled out of the match due to an ankle injury while batsman Sachin Tendulkar has been rested for the first three matches.
England cricket team reached Rajkot on Thursday. Poor batting form remains England’’s big worry after they suffered a humiliating Stanford Twenty20 Challenge defeat in the Caribbean last month where they were bowled out for 99.
They were also scuttled for 98 by a second-string Mumbai team to lose their second warm-up game on Tuesday.
Skipper Kevin Pietersen told reporters after the practice session that his team is ready to fire on the field on Friday.
“I think the guys have worked a little bit harder. And I don”t think we lack competitive cricket. Hopefully we have learnt enough lessons in the last couple of weeks so that we can come out and fire on all cylinders on Friday. No it’’s not ideal preparation but at the end of the day the attack we faced none of us had ever seen these bowlers …wickets. So this wicket looks great we know whom we are going to come up against on Friday. So all that counts what happens on Friday and over the next five weeks,” said Pietersen.
England won last year’’s home one-day series against India 4-3 after losing 5-1 in their previous series in India in 2006.
England is currently third in the rankings while India is fifth.
After Rajkot, other games will be played at Indore on November 17, Kanpur on November 20, Bangalore on November 23, Cuttack on November 26, Guwahati on November 29 and New Delhi on December 2.
The teams are:
England: Ian Bell, Matt Prior, Owais Shah, Kevin Pietersen (captain), Andrew Flintoff, Paul Collingwood, Samit Patel, Ravi Bopara, Stuart Broad, James Anderson, Steve Harmison.
India: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Murali Vijay, Yusuf Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, R.P. Singh, Munaf Patel, Pragyan Ojha, Zaheer Khan. (ANI)