Team India Gear Up For A Whitewash

England will be desperate to avoid a second successive series whitewash in India, when they take on the Men in Blue in the fifth and final one-dayer at the Eden Gardens on Tuesday.

Having come nowhere near beating the Indians in the four matches thus far, the England players who seem to running out of ideas, will have one final crack at the world champions, in an effort to end the tour with a victory to their name.

AP Photo

It was the same old story for the visitors in the fourth ODI at Mumbai, as the English team failed to put up a competitive total, and was blown away by six wickets with almost ten overs to spare.

England once again failed to provide the finishing touches to their innings, and was bowled out for 220 in 46.1 overs.

Apart from some of the self inflicted wounds, England have also been caught on the wrong foot by some fiery bowling by, what could be described as the next generation of Indian pacers.

After sitting out the first three matches of the ongoing series, Varun Aaron, well and truly announced himself on the big stage by castling three lower order batsmen, to bring an abrupt end to the England innings.

Even though it’s still early days to go overboard with Aaron, he could just turn out to be the ideal weapon to polish off the opposition tail.

Playing at home, the Indian batsmen seem have rediscovered themselves, and the situation was no different at Mumbai on Sunday.

Virat Kohli once again steered Team India’s chase, as he finished with unbeaten innings of 86, and Suresh Raina more than played his part with a score of 80 from 62 balls.

England on their part seem to have completely lost the plot in conditions which have not quite suited their style of play.

Their batting has proved to be insipid and their bowling toothless; Tim Bresnan, batting at number eight was the highest scorer in the Mumbai clash with a run a ball 45.

Although Steve Finn continues to impress with his pace and bounce, the rest of the bowlers have consistently misfired, which have allowed the Indians to recover time after time, after the loss of early wickets.

Memories of the 5-0 hammering during the 2008 tour must already be doing the rounds on the minds of many of the England players, and it would take a brave man to bet in favour of the Poms preventing back to back whitewashes in India.