Wednesday, November 19, 2008

International Cricket, England set to ring changes


Graeme Swann could make the cut for the next ODI against India as England attempt to bounce back from two defeats.

Yesterday's 54-run loss at the Nehru Stadium followed an emphatic 158-run hammering in Rajkot, with England sticking to an unchanged line-up for both matches.
But with the tourists needing a vast improvement in their performance and tactics for the next game in Kanpur on Thursday, England may consider dropping their previous formula and introducing Swann's off-spin into their plans.
Nottinghamshire spinner Swann has been overlooked as England kept faith with a seam-heavy attack and county team-mate Samit Patel took on the slow bowling duties.
That formula is clearly not working, however, and captain Kevin Pietersen has admitted Swann may be considered in Kanpur either as a replacement for Patel or to feature alongside him.
"There's a food for thought there definitely, but we'll just wait and see," said Pietersen. "It's quite emotional talking just after a match so we'll see where we go."
Left-arm seamer Ryan Sidebottom could also come into contention after missing out on the warm-up matches with prolonged Achilles problems as England desperately try to shuffle their pack to try to remain in contention in the series.
"I just think we can be competitive and keep improving to get closer and win a couple of games," said Pietersen. We want to try to win this series because that's what we're here to do.
"I didn't want to change the side, I wanted to give the guys the confidence to know that they could turn things around.
"The team we went in with, we thought could win this fixture, and be more competitive, and we were."
Indeed, despite the healthy margin of defeat, Pietersen remained upbeat about England's performance in the second match of the series and believes it should be regarded as evidence of their progress over the last week.
"We've made a marked improvement from the first game, when we were totally outplayed and were out of it from 30 overs onwards," he explained.
"We certainly got a good start here, but we probably weren't aggressive and didn't carry that through and we probably thought it would just happen for us, which is a mistake of ours.
"The bowlers tried their hearts out and the batters definitely gave us a good run but we needed someone to get a big score like Yuvraj (Singh) did."

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