Teams hope for brighter weather in second game

Rocked by one controversy after another, India will be hoping that the spotlight shifts to cricketing action as they take on an upbeat England side in the second one-day international of the five-match series here on Wednesday.

With the first match in Bristol being washed out without a ball being bowled, India will be itching to perform in a format where Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his men have shown their prowess over the years.
Some on-field action will also mean that skipper Dhoni will be able to focus on cricket, after his comments supporting chief coach Duncan Fletcher did not got down well with the BCCI bigwigs.

A notable thing during this tour has been Dhoni expressing his point-of-views quite explicitly.

It happened in the Ravindra Jadeja-James Anderson case during the Test series and then after the loss when he hinted that perhaps he had done enough as the Indian Test skipper.

Now this is the third instance where he suddenly finds that he is not on the same page with the Board. With simmering tension, all parties though will be hoping for clear weather in Cardiff as some cricket will do well to cool down tempers.

In terms of on-field action there wasn’t much to take from Bristol, except the pre-match practice on Sunday.

For Indian batsmen, this meant big shots sailing out of the park at every opportunity possible. Almost every batsman concentrated on hitting out in a bid to get away from the Test mindset. Dhoni himself led the way, with Rohit Sharma and Stuart Binny also using their long handles well. Suresh Raina too had a little hitting-out session towards the end.

While their hits cleared the nets and the ground limits with ease, it was a pity that they didn’t get to test the ground’s small boundaries on Monday. Even so, it wasn’t easy to identify which players could be the ones in the Indian playing eleven. There is one surety though. Sanju Samson will not be making his debut anytime soon unless Dhoni sits out due to some unforeseen circumstances.

No media conference

Meanwhile, the Indian team management on sought to steer clear of the media by not sending any player for the pre-match press conference.

Dhoni chose to skip the press conference on Tuesday while the team management did not depute any player to face the media.