Dharamsala: Riding on a fine unbeaten century from Ian bell and some fantastic bowling efforts earlier in the innings from their bowlers, England beat India by seven wickets to narrow the series defeat margin to 2-3 at the HPCA Stadium in Dharamsala on Sunday.
Earlier, England restricted India to 226 and then it was Ian Bell who came out with flying colours and scored the 113 not out. He scored the first century of this five-match series. He also became the second highest run scorer of the series after Suresh Raina.
England had a slow start of their innings but Alastair Cook and Ian Bell did well to see-off the first few overs and was taking the advantage of field-restrictions. It was Ishant Sharma who gave India their first break when he knocked off the bails of England captain.
Kevin Pietersen came out and started playing his strokes but Shami Ahmed did bowl really well to contain him and very soon he got the reward for his efforts. After Pietersen, Joe Root did quite well to keep India out of the game and added 79 runs with Bell. This could have been the turning point of this match and Ian bell went on to make the century at this very beautiful venue.
Later, Bell put on a partnership with Eoin Morgan to cruise England to a comfortable victory and it was Morgan who scored three big-sixes to ease the pressure of the Bell’s shoulders and England ended the series on a positive note.
Earlier in the day, it was Suresh Raina who raised the hand up and took India to a respectable total which had some pinch-hitting from Jadeja and Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
After half an hour delayed start of the fifth and final ODI, England won the toss and put India to bat first. Cook judged the pitch very well and to make the good use of early moisture in the pitch, he chose to bowl first. His decision paid dividend from the third over when Indian opener Rohit Sharma departed while trying to play an outside off-stump bowl and got caught in slips and to add worries to Indian dressing room, Virat Kohli committed the same mistake and James Tredwell took the catch to give Bresnan two wickets in two balls.
After the early loss of wickets, Yuvraj came in to bat with Gambhir who was looking in very good touch and scored five crisp boundaries but his Innings didn’t lasted too long and James Tredwell picked wicket in his first over of the match. On the other hand, Yuvraj who was looking uncomfortable from the start didn’t do quite well and was back into the pavilion very soon.
After the debacle of top order, it was Suresh Raina who did well to steady the Indian innings. He played a matured innings and showed he can bat on any occasion and his two straight sixes were enough to show that he will not allow a fifth bowler to settle down. He did this quite well along-side Ravindra Jadeja who played good aggressive innings of 39 runs before getting out to Tredwell.
Raina kept building his innings by adding valuable runs and kept picking singles and tried to keep the scoreboard ticking. Raina scored eight boundaries and two sixes in his knock of 83 off 98 balls before he was caught at mid-wicket by Ian Bell while trying to
pull the ball.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Ravichandran Ashwin did well in the end by getting some boundaries and sixes to surpass the total of 200. Bhuvneshwar Kumar played a cameo of 31 runs in the last five overs and made sure it will not be a cakewalk for England.
Tim Bresnan bowled really well to be the leading wicket taker for England and took four wickets. Steven Finn and James Tredwell managed to pick-up two wickets each and did bowl really well in the middle overs to restrict India to a low score of 226.
James Tredwell did well to pick-up 11 wickets in this series with an average of 18.18 which was simply phenomenal and apart from him England openers Alastair Cook and Ian Bell did quite well and were among the highest run scorer in this series.
By Indian Sports News Network