England on mission comeback, India to tighten the noose

Faridabad, Mar 30: Kevin Pietersen skipping his breakfast or his team's visit to the serenity of Taj Mahal may not just be enough to heal the wounds of their collective hara-kiri in the series opener at the Ferozeshah Kotla on a terrible Tuesday.

And after cocking a snook at the visitors in Delhi, Team India would ensure that the mistakes are not repeated as they hope to tighten the noose around opponent's neck when the second one day match starts here at the Nahar Singh Stadium tomorrow.

The British media has gone berserk and the common refrain is the Kamikaze England batsmen swept their way to peril and throwing away a match from a position from where it was rather difficult to lose.

From India's point of view, with England batsmen on a suicidal mode, it was an ill-gotten chance well grabbed to go one up in the series.

And the joy from the brilliant Harbhajan Singh-scripted victory seemed to have glossed over the flaws.

Rahul Dravid loses his characteristic composure when asked about the lucklustre top order -- ''We don't need anyone to come and point out that, it's quite evident from the scores'' -- but the fact remains that Team India has a 'topless' batting line-up with the captain being the only exception.

A fat Virender Sehwag battled with back spasm and is one knock away from glory. But wait for that glorious knock keeps getting prolonged and the crowd now demands his head.

Sachin Tendulkar's shoulder surgery opened the door for Gautam Gambhir but he is always a shaky starter and then plays too many shots too early. Rather interestingly, he is emerging as one of the better fielders in the deep, pouching three brilliant catches in the Delhi match.

Dravid remains the fulcrum of the batting, Yuvraj Singh is again lacking consistency, while Mohammad Kaif looks in a hurry.

In the Delhi match, Mahendra Singh Dhoni was forced to leash himself in and had to adopt the watch-and-play policy and both his side and the crowd missed the pyrotechnics he is known for.

Suresh Raina was pugnacious as usual but he has to learn to convert the start into big scores and then the lower order is exposed.

-up match and were then trailing before they caught up India in Mumbai.

The one day series is following more or less the same script with the visitors first losing their practice match in Jaipur and then trailing 0-1 in the seven-match series.

Mourning the Delhi match that slipped through their fingers, England will be plotting another comeback, while India would like to play a hostile host and foil any such bid when the teams take to the field tomorrow.

Teams (From): India: Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Rahul Dravid (c), Yuvraj Singh, Mohammad Kaif, Suresh Raina, MS Dhoni (wk), Irfan Pathan, Venugopal Rao, Munaf Patel, S Sreesanth, Harbhajan Singh, Ajit Agarkar, Ramesh Powar and Rudra Pratap Singh England: Andrew Strauss, Vikram Solanki, Owais Shah, Matt Prior, Andrew Flintoff (c), Kevin Pietersen, Kabir Ali, James Anderson, Gareth Batty, Ian Bell, Ian Blackwell, Paul Collingwood, Matthew Hoggard, Geraint Jones (wk), Sajid Mahmood and Liam Plunkett.

UNI