ODI preview 
/ Michael Vaughan / 21 October 2011 / Leave a Comment 
Captain's knock. Dhoni's well-paced 35 not out got India over the line in the 3rd ODI.
"If England bat first and get more than 300 they’ll once again go close but the smart money is on India prevailing again at [1.7], against an England side who still can’t come to term with the conditions and don’t seem to learn from their mistakes."
Michael Vaughan is full of praise for the Indian captain and has a few harsh words to say about England's inability to learn from their mistakes. The latter will cost Alastair Cook's men again, as India go 4-0 up.
England came much closer to winning a match than they did in the first couple of ODIs on Thursday but it wasn't quite enough.
Where did they lose the game? Firstly, in the bowling department. India bowled full and straight, whereas England were guilty of bowling short and wide far too often. Those are freebies on these wickets to batsmen of this calibre.
Jonathan Trott played really well to score 98 but when the analysts in the England backroom staff crunched the numbers in the aftermath of the match, they'll have picked up on the fact he only scored one boundary during the last 10 overs. For a batsmen who is well set on a good wicket, that's simply not enough.
And finally, and most worryingly of all, there was the fielding. Dropped catches, missed run-outs, overthrows. You name it, England were guilty of it. Which is all the more remarkable when you consider that just a couple of months ago it was the Indians who were slow and clumsy in the field and England who looked energetic and sharp.
In the end it was left to MS Dhoni to play a typical 'finisher's' role and score the winning runs with another of those wristy drives to the boundary rope. Dhoni is a phenomenal limited-overs player, arguably the best in the business. Not since Australia's Michael Bevan has a batsman been so good at pacing a run chase. He knows how long he has to play himself in, knows when to accelerate and has an instinct for where to score his runs. Dhoni almost always finishes the innings unbeaten.
But at 30 he may decide that he needs to cut back on his workload in the near future. Keeping wicket, batting in the middle order and captaining India in all three formats takes a hell of a lot out of you and he may decide to give up the Test captaincy over the next couple of years, or indeed give up the longest format altogether. We'll have to wait and see but for the time being England have to work out a way of getting him out or else this series is only going one way and that's towards a whitewash.
Can we make a case for England winning the fourth ODI in Mumbai? We said already that their best chance was to post a big score and try to defend it by taking early wickets and hope the pressure of a big run chase got to the batsmen. Well, 298 looked like an imposing total on Thursday but in the end it was a relatively comfortable chase for India, when you consider they still had five wickets in hand. If England bat first and get more than 300 they'll once again go close but the smart money is on India prevailing again at [1.7], against an England side who still can't come to term with the conditions and don't seem to learn from their mistakes.
Alastair Cook's side are terrific on green wickets at home where the ball moves all over the place. But a 5-0 loss here in India a couple of years ago, a 6-1 drubbing against Australia in January this year and losses to Ireland and Bangladesh at the World Cup are all proof they simply can't replicate that form away from England. The first thing the management need to address is the issue of the wickets they prepare back home. If they're going to play on 300+ wickets away, they need to have practice of playing on those on English soil. Get used to hitting more sixes, learn to take wickets when there's no assistance and learn to use spin to reduce the run rate. Until they do that, they're a pretty one-dimensional team.
On the plus side, Kevin Pietersen has scored 46 and 64 in his last two matches and is looking his old confident, aggressive self. A big knock from KP may not be enough to win England the match but at [5.0] he's the stand-out bet to top score for his side.
3 pts Back India to win @ [1.7]
2 pts Back Kevin Pietersen to be England top batsman @ [5.0]
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