England bowled out for 125, their lowest ever against India

Jaipur, Oct 15 (UNI) Home pacers polished off the top order and spinners consumed the rest as England were bundled out for 125 in just 37 overs, their lowest ever one day score against India in the ICC Champions Trophy cricket tournametn here today.

England's previous lowest against India was 149 way back in 1984-85 at Sydney in the WCC tournament.

Ramesh Power claimed a career-best of 3 for 24 while Munaf Patel rattled the visitors with three for 18 as England displayed spineless batting with only Paul Collingwood showing some nerves to emerge the highest scorer with 38 runs.

Nothing went wrong for India and nothing went right for the visitors as Rahul Dravid won the toss and elected to field. And after a long time, everything clicked for India as per the script.

They included two turners knowing the England batsmen's weakness against spin and it paid off.

The Indians reposed their faith in Irfan Pathan and he bowled splendid spell of eight overs on the trot and was given a good support by Munaf Patel who provided the hosts the initial breakthrough and though the third seamer Ajit Agarkar failed to take a wicket, he too helped in containing the England batsmen during the power play.

The makeshift opening pair of Andrew Strauss and Ian Bell failed to give England the start their team needed as they could add only 10 runs for the first wicket off 20 balls before Bell headed back for pavilion. He was trapped leg before by Munaf Patel at his individual score of four runs.

Irfan struck the next blow when he had the prize wicket of skipper Andrew Flintoff whom he trapped leg before. The skipper, playing the one dayer after a long lay off, failed to contribute anything to his team's total.

And as Micheal Yardy also fell to Munaf leg before, England were in a hopeless position with the scoreboard reading 17 for three in just 7.3 overs and after that the visitors never recoverd.

The England batsmen looked a struggling lot as Irfan and Munaf bowled with fire and accuracy. Dravid acknowledged Irfan's good bowling by allowing him eight overs on the trot and the seamer did not disappoint his skipper as he bowled a superb spell, conceding only 20 runs for two wickets.

Dravid did not indulge in any experimentation. All the regular bowlers were pressed into service and they did the job commendably, leaving no space for part time bowlers like Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag or Sachin Tendulkar.

After 21 overs, Dravid introduced spinners and Harbhajan and Ramesh Powar made life difficult for the lower order batsmen.

But still it was the contribution of the middle order batsmen Kevin Pieterson (27, 4x4, 39 balls), Paul Collingwoods (38, 6x4, 54 balls) and Jamie Dalrymple (24,46 balls) which saw England cross the three figure mark.

Harbhajan bagged one wicket conceding 27 runs in his eight-over spell and also took a stunning running catch to return Sajid Mahmood off Ramesh Powar.

Barring for the 49-run sixth wicket partnership between Pieterson and Collingwood, no English batsmen displayed patience to stay on the crease for long. The last five wickets fell for just 21 runs in a space of 6.4 overs and that showed the brittleness of their batting.

UNI HSB AY VV1805