England aim to extend series lead

Old Trafford, 30 August 2007

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One-day international, Old Trafford: England v India
Match starts 1430 Thursday

England will look to extend their 2-1 series lead over India when the two sides meet again at Old Trafford in a day-night match on Thursday.

They hope skipper Paul Collingwood (stomach bug) and Andrew Flintoff (knee) will be available for the game.

"I'm desperate to play. The chance to play in front of my home crowd is special," Flintoff told BBC Sport.

India, meanwhile, are looking to improve their bowling and fielding as they try to get back on level terms.

Fielding coach Robin Singh said: "Some of the players have been a little slow off the mark...but it really all boils down to cricketing awareness and fitness.

"You have to take it in your stride. We dropped some simple catches so we need to practise harder and try to take the simple ones. Most of the mistakes have been basic mistakes.

"We've spoken about the fielding and putting pressure on the batsmen by fielding better."

Singh suggested that India's fielding shortcomings were a cultural problem.

He added: "Most players in India don't play more than one sport and they don't play a lot of contact sports. When you play contact sports you're not afraid to fall or get hurt.

"You find a lot of people are getting into the development of fielding on better grounds as well and I think we'll find it gets better with the newer generation."

England will look to repeat the excellent performance which earned them a 42-run victory at Edgbaston.

And they will be hoping to be boosted by the presence of the influential Flintoff on the ground where he plays his county cricket for Lancashire.

He added: "I got through the training session, I batted and bowled and hopefully it won't flare up overnight.

"Every time I drive through the gates at Old Trafford it's a special feeling, there is a really nice feel about the place.

"There's a bit of added pressure for me in front of my own crowd but it's to be enjoyed.

"I don't feel like I'm that far away - one score or a bit of time in the middle and things will start happening again.

"I'm desperate to score runs again. At the World Cup my batting was rubbish and I came home determined to work on it."

India have only played England three times in one-dayers at Old Trafford, most famously in 1983 when they won a World Cup semi-final by six wickets.

It was a different story 11 years ago, when England came out on top by four wickets, thanks to a century from Surrey's Ali Brown.

There is not a single England survivor from that match, but India can still call on Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly as key figures in their batting line-up.

England (from): PD Collingwood (capt), IR Bell, MJ Prior (wkt), OA Shah, K Pietersen, A Flintoff, RS Bopara, SC Broad, CT Tremlett, JM Anderson, MS Panesar, AN Cook, AD Mascarenhas, J Lewis.

India (from): R Dravid (capt) MS Dhoni (wkt) SR Tendulkar, SC Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh, G Gambhir, RP Sharma, P Chawla, RR Powar, RV Uthappa, AB Agarkar, Z Khan, MM Patel, KD Karthik, RP Singh.

Umpires: Aleem Dar (Pkn) & IJ Gould (Eng)

Source: BBC Sport