F'bad: India should flex its batting

The second India-England one-dayer should be a hard-fought battle between the two sides, writes Khurram Habib.

It was a cheerful and relaxed Indian team sans Irfan Pathan that stepped out onto the field for practice at the Nahar Singh stadium, which suddenly seemed to have turned into an international venue of reasonable standard from a ragged looking public ground almost overnight.

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It should be a hard-fought battle between sides that are pretty different in nature. While England are still in the process of becoming a competitive one-day side, India are having a dream run in ODIs. Kevin Pietersen on Wednesday and Rahul Dravid on Thursday testified to that.

What makes this game a bit of an enigma is the wicket, which if you listen to various versions, could do almost anything.

The memories from the previous match are still fresh. That time around, the Kiwis were hard done by the early morning juice. The English camp feels it will stay low and could make run scoring difficult.

That the wicket might play a big role again isn't a difficult guess at all. On Wednesday, while pitch in-charge Vijay Yadav and his team were testing the wicket, the bounce appeared rather low and it wasn't rising even waist high.

"We have done the needful to make it a competitive wicket and it should be a batting friendly track," Yadav said.

His reasoning aside, the wicket can't be expected to be of high quality, even if lasts the distance, as the top-most games here, in recent times, apart from the ODI between New Zealand and Australia in 2003, have been for the inter-district championship for the Pataudi Cup.

Dravid however called it a firm wicket. "It will definitely not become powdery. It’ll be a 230-240 run game," he said.

The Indian skipper takes his men into this game one up in the series and the way the Indians approached the nets showed how much at ease they are. There is still that odd worry, batting, and had it not been for some injudicious strokes by Pietersen and Flintoff in the previous match, the axe could have fallen on the batting, particularly the top half.

Virender Sehwag, going through a lean phase, was given a pretty long stint with the bat at the nets. He looked okay, considering coach Chappell's comments from the side. However, most of the deliveries that were bowled to him were on and around the off stump though of late short-pitched deliveries and incoming deliveries have been his problem.

Gautam Gambhir is the other batsman looking desperately for runs. He started off well at Kotla but one of his two nemeses -- chasing a wide one -- caught up with him. Without Tendulkar in the side, the opening combine looks shaky. The good bit though with this side in recent times has been that everyone has shown potential with the bat and that can count on this kind of wicket.

Pathan incidentally, missed the practice session because of flu. "He is down with flu and a sore throat," said Dravid. "We thought we should be resting him for today's practice."

That makes him a doubtful starter but Dravid didn't say anything specific about his availability.

Munaf Patel, S Sreesanth and RP Singh meanwhile bowled for long with the former two looking particularly impressive. The skipper appreciated Munaf's skills in the conference though he said that the lanky Ikhar boy would be 100 per cent only in the next match.

England, who surprised everyone in the Tests despite their depleted side, seemed to have lost steam though they'll try to look for redemption. The fact that the wicket could be slow in nature is already playing on their minds and it could just mean that the stroke-players that England possess -- Flintoff, Pietersen, Jones -- may have to change their style a bit.