Indian and English cricketers cast an anxious eye skywards rather than at the pitch or the ground on Monday, and with good reason too. The elements already showed their vile temper the day the teams arrived at the Rose Bowl, driving them indoors for their training sessions on Sunday.

The shards of black clouds hovering over Sout-hampton pose the biggest threat to the first one-dayer on Tuesday, to be played under lights. The weather forecast isn’t too promisings, the predictions being for intermittent to heavy rains over the next three days.

So capricious is the English weather that talk of weather might quickly appear to be worthless rambling. In that sense, there is a certain similarity with one-day cricket as fortunes in the limited-overs format too can change in the bat of an eyelid.

It’s precisely the unpredictability that will make the seven-match one-day series an appealing affair. The Test series win and the form of their players will make India the overwhelming fav-ourites in the eyes of many, but you can only write England off at your own risk.

England’s pride has taken a beating with the 0-1 defeat in the Test series. It might not be entirely out of place to suggest that England will try to redeem pride with a strong show in the one-dayers.

For India, the challenge will be to sustain the momentum acquired during the Tests. Rahul Dravid’s men know that they cannot afford to rest on the laurels of the Test series win. The lead-up games in Glasgow and Northampton should work as a timely wake-up call.

The area of concern surrounds the form of the bowlers. Zaheer Khan appeared to have lost a bit of edge in the match against the Lions, oozing runs aplenty. His performance in that match, however, shouldn’t give the think-tank too many worries as the Mumbai left-arm paceman can raise his performance by a couple of notches in big-match situations.

Munaf Patel, however, seemed to have bowled with one foot off the pedal in both matches. Perhaps, the psychological scars of that lower back injury he had picked up during Bangladesh tour still haunt him.

Bowling coach Venkatesh Prasad has a major role to play in helping the Baroda pacer put those thoughts behind him and give his best on the field. At some stage, Munaf will have to perform the duty of a third seamer and step in to relieve the pressure on senior colleagues Zaheer and Ajit Agarkar.

RP may get nod
Such a situation might not arise in the immediate future as the team management may opt for Zaheer, Agarkar, and Rudra Pratap Singh for the first one-dayer, despite the fact that together, the trio conceded 296 runs against the Lions.

The slot for a spinner seems set to go Mumbai off-spinner Ramesh Powar’s way at the moment. The two- spinner theory that the Indians employed in both games last week is also on the cards because Powar and Piyush Chawla did well in those matches. In that case, India will play only two seamers, with Sourav Ganguly chipping in as the third seamer.

The batsmen, untested in the limited-overs version against a good Lions attack after the match was washed out, resembled hard-nosed bullies against Soctland. Chances are that the old firm of Sachin Tendulkar and Ganguly will reunite at the top of the tree, with Dravid moving himself further down the order to facilitate Yuvraj Singh’s move up to number four.

Spotlight on Freddie
Andrew Flintoff's first international outing for a while will be watched with keen interest. The burly Lancastrian will be eager to make his comeback a memorable one. The all-rounder has slightly modified his action to reduce the burden on his landing foot. Another interesting battle between him and his favoured opposition can be expected if Flintoff comes up with the goods.

England hopes suffered a blow when left-arm seamer Ryan Sidebottom was ruled out of the first one-dayer due to a side strain picked up during the third Oval Test.

Teams (from):
India: Rahul Dravid (capt), Robin Uthappa, Gautam Gambhir, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh, Rohit Sharma, Dinesh Karthik, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Ramesh Powar, Piyush Chawla, Ajit Agarkar, Zaheer Khan, Rudra Pratap Singh, Munaf Patel.

England: Paul Collingwood (capt), Ian Bell, James Anderson, Ravi Bopara, Stuart Broad, Alistair Cook, Andrew Flintoff, Dimitri Mascarenhas, Monty Panesar, Kevin Pietersen, Matt Prior, Owais Shah, Ryan Sidebottom, Chris Tremlett.

Umpires: Billy Doctrove (West Indies) and Mark Benson. Third umpire: Nigel Llong. Match referee: Roshan Mahanama (Sri Lanka).