Indian Captain Rahul Dravid Won the toss and decide to bowl first at Rose Bowl,Southampton in First of Seven ODI Series against England.
Match had Started from 7.00 PM (Indian Time which will be Day/Night Encounter) Final Playing XI for First ODI for Both Team Indian Squad: Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid (C), Yuvraj Singh, Dinesh Karthik, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (WK), Ajit Agarkar, Zaheer Khan, Piyush Chawla, R.P Singh England Squad: Alastair Cook, Matt Prior (WK), Ian Bell, Dimitri Mascarenhas, Kevin Pietersen, Paul Collingwood (C), Andrew Flintoff, Ravi Bopara, Stuart Broad, Monty Panesar, James Anderson
After winning the test series by 1-0 after 21 years of gap Rahul Dravid and his man is set to fire all cylinders from ODI campaign which begins from today (21st August). After winning only third test series in England in 75 years of test cricket Indian team celebrated their achievement last week and now they are ready to go in the seven match ODI series. They have to proof lot after the disastrous performance in the World Cup 2007 and they came up good by beating Bangladesh by 2-0 in their home yard and South Africa by 2-1 in Ireland. So far India had played eight ODI’s after world cup and they manage to won 6 of those with one loss and one rain washed drawn. So they are trying to improve a lot with mixture of youngster and old fox in their squad. England is the home team and some of their players have been involved in domestic one-dayers recently, yet they're hoping for "an upset". Their best all-rounder Andrew Flintoff is making come back after the gap of three months dew to ankle injury and he is ready to go to the Indians. Maximum players (Six of them) in England team on average not played more than 20 ODI and if we left Flintoff and Collingwood out of the side then total they have played around 200 ODI’s all together which is far less than what Sachin Tendulkar Played alone. England is on the rebuild path and they have some of the very talented players with some of them playing really well in this county season. For Paul Collingwood, captaincy of the one-day team hasn't started on the right note. He has already seen his team crumble to the West Indies but hopes the return of Flintoff will change the script. For India there is some headache for the selectors since Gautam Gambhir came out good against the Scottish team, so if Gautam Gambhir will open the inning then either Sachin or Saurav have top bat down the order. Yuvraj Singh who has sitted out through out the test series against England is also keen to make some runs. For Munaf Patel who is making comeback after injury is not bowled in the two matches he played so far one against Scotland and one against England Lions. So he also wants to get back on track.
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