Rocked by one controversy after another, India will be hoping that the spotlight shifts to cricket as they take on an upbeat England in the second one-day international of the five-match series in here 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 point of note during this tour has been Dhoni expressing his firm point-of-views 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 then as some cricket will do well to cool down tempers.
In terms of on-field action there wasn’t much to take away 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.
Dhoni had not given any hints in his pre-match press conference either, but he did mention that Rohit Sharma had done a decent enough job as opener. It bodes well for the Mumbai batsman who did open the innings with Shikhar Dhawan in the practice game versus Middlesex, and looks set to do so in the near-future as well.
