India looki g to secure series-clinching victory

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

Kochi, Apr 5 (UNI) Having won the first three matches rather emphatically, India would look forward to tighten their stranglehold and secure a series-clinching victory when they take on a battered and bruised England in the fourth one dayer at the Nehru Stadium here tomorrow.

England on the other hand, were placed in a sink-or-swim situation and would be under pressure to win the crunch match to keep the seven-match series alive.

Considering that they had won three of the previous four matches here, India would be eager to seal the series tomorrow itself to take an insurmountable 4-0 lead before ''experimenting with the reserves'' in the remaining three contests to identify the combination for various situations in the World Cup.

While India could not afford to be complacent and would go all out in their quest to win the series, the series-levelling test victory at Mumbai seemed to be a thing of the past for the Englishmen, who looked more pedestrian in their approach in Goa in the last match.

Considering the way they capitulated at New Delhi, Faridabad and more ignominously at Goa, the visitors had to come out with some extraordinary performance to keep themselves afloat in the series.

As the pitch is expected to be batsmen-friendly and the hot and humid conditions are not that conducive to them, the visitors have a tough job on their hands in containing the Indian batting line up, which looked formidable despite the absence of Sachin Tendulkar.

After having been written off by their own media after the abject surrender at Goa that a 7-0 whitewash was on the cards, stand-in skipper Andrew Flintoff faces one of the toughest battles to prove that the Mumbai victory was not just a one-off thing.

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