Indians want to put up better show

By V. V. Subrahmanyam

HYDERABAD, FEB.1. It will be a different ball game altogether. It is quite apparent that the 1-0 `Test' series win will in no way give any advantage to the Indians when they take on England in the first of the under-19 one-dayers at Lal Bahadur Stadium as it will be a close encounter.

The fact that the two camps focussed more on fielding in practice sessions with England going a step further spending four hours on this aspect alone, the worries definitely are not on the bowling or batting fronts. It is the fielding which could well decide the winner tomorrow, believe the two camps.

India, bolstered by the inclusion of Manvinder Bisla, who scored 700 runs in domestic cricket this season, will look for better performances from the middle-order as the openers Vinayak Mane and Gautam Gambhir are the most consistent performers with the captain Ajay Ratra virtually leading from the front. Local lad N. Arjun Yadav is all set to make his `debut' as Indian coach Roger Binny made it clear that the choice of a spinner will be between off-spinner Dharmichand and leggie Mishra.

The teams:

India (from): Ajay Ratra (capt), Vinayak Mane, Gautam Gambhir, Maninder Misla, N. Arjun Yadav, Alind Naidu, Manvinder Singh, Vidyut Sivaramakrishnan, Siddarth Trivedi, Nitin Agarwal, M. Dharmichand, Amit Misra, Deshpande and Arindam Das.

Coach: Roger Binny.

England (from): Ian Bell (capt), John Sadler, Gary Pratt, Kadeer Ali, Ian Pattison, Justin Bishop, Andrew McGarry, Robert Ferley, Chirs Tremlett, Monty Panesar, Nadeem Malik, Kyle Hogg, Gordon Muchall, Nicky Peng and Mark Wallace. Coach: Tim Boon.

Umpires: Messrs V.K.Ramaswamy & Ramesh Jadhav.

Timings of play: 9.00 am to 12.30 pm. 1.15 pm to close of play.

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