Saturday, August 18, 2007

India frustrated by the weather

Heavy rain in Northampton saw India's final warm-up game ahead of the one-day series with England end in a washout.

Having been set a challenging target of 297 by the England Lions, India's opener were only able to face 6.5 overs in reply before dark clouds unleashed a downpour just before 3pm.

Umpires Neil Bainton and Richard Illingworth took the players off the field and officially abandoned the match at 16.15.

India, captained by Mahendra Singh Dhoni, had faced an uphill task to chase down the total after some aggressive strokeplay from the English batsman earlier in the day.

Captain Vikram Solanki led from the front with a fine 60 from the top of the order, but the real star of the show with the bat was Sussex all-rounder Luke Wright.

Wright hammered 56 from only 40 balls as India's bowling attack was put to the sword.

Zaheer Khan was particularly expensive, going for 57 from seven overs.

Wright eventually fell to Ramesh Powar, looping one off the face of the bat that Dhoni held with glee.

However, useful contributions down the order from Paul Nixon (39), Ravi Bopara (37) and Chris Schofield (35) and Tim Bresnan (32no) saw England post a testing total.

All India's bowlers were expensive but Powar's 3-52 should be enough to secure his place in the team to face England proper on Tuesday.

Robin Uthappa (12no) and Sourav Ganguly (18no) ensured India made a solid start in reply, but after the heavens opened, the umpires had no option but to call a halt to proceedings.

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