England Cricket / Michael Vaughan / 12 October 2011 /

Thse are two evenly-matched sides on paper but India's stronger batting in their favourite conditions tips the balance their way. England are in for a tough time of it over the next few weeks, says Michael Vaughan.

That 3-0 score line in the recent one-day series over in England doesn't really reflect how evenly matched these two sides are. England probably did deserve to win it but rain, lost tosses and even Duckworth-Lewis dealt India some cruel blows over those five games and they will be out to settle some old scores in their own backyard. There was plenty of very good cricket played in that series but there was some bad blood and a few verbals thrown in as well, so any lack of motivation or desire amongst either team isn't likely to feature over the next few weeks.

England will be without two key players in Eoin Morgan and Stuart Broad. The Irish-born left-hander has been England's best batsman for a while now in limited-overs cricket and is a huge loss while Broad has 84 ODIs under his belt and good experience of subcontinent conditions. India will have to make do without Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan and Munaf Patel, to name but a few. So in one way the hosts have the greater number of absentees but on the other hand they probably have a bigger pool of ODI players to choose from.

Playing in India is testing for visiting players for a number of reasons. Heat, humidity, pollution, noise, Delhi belly - you name it. Bowlers will find wickets with little or no bounce and very little assistance in terms of generating swing so runs on the board is normally the name of the game rather than bowling first, restricting the opposition to a low score and trying to chase it. My feeling is that, over the course of the series, England will out-field India and run between the wickets better. I don't think there's much to choose between these two in terms of bowling but on batting-friendly wickets it is in India who look more capable of consistently posting and chasing scores of 300 plus. And that's probably where the matches will be won and lost. That makes me inclined to fancy 4-1 to India in the correct score market.

The interesting thing is that England's best chance of winning an ODI comes in their very first match. I've looked at that match in greater detail here but, in a nutshell, my rationale is that England have played practice matches at Hyderabad in the build-up to the series and know the wicket well. The likes of Virat Kohli and Gautam Gambhir, both so crucial for India with the bat, were recently involved in the Champions League T20 competition so won't necessarily have been preparing for the series in the best possible way. England could well catch India a bit cold and a back-to-lay of England in the series winner market at [2.16] may be the way to go, as I'm very sweet on India actually emerging as the overall victors.

Kevin Pietersen has had a tough time of it lately in ODIs, even though he's been pretty consistent in both Tests and T20s. He's been here before with England and played a couple of seasons of IPL cricket so is familiar with the conditions and the pace of the ball. He's under a little bit of pressure and we've seen in the past how dangerous he can be when that's the case so I'm siding with KP to be England's Series top batsman at around [4.8].

As for India, I know my colleagues Ryan and Jamie have both sung the praises of Virat Kohli and I'm a huge fan myself but this time my money is on Suresh Raina. There may be a couple of matches where he's not at the crease for that long if the top order really cash in on a good wicket. But he's a class act, hits the ball long and hard and over five matches he'll get enough chances to score heavily; he looks the call at [6.8] to be India's leading run-scorer.

2 pts Back India to win 4-1 @ [8.0]
1 pt Back-to-lay England to win the Series @ [2.4]
1 pt Back Kevin Pietersen to be England Series top batsman @ [4.8]
2 pts Back Suresh Raina to be India Series top batsman @ [6.8]

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