ODI preview / Michael Vaughan / 20 October 2011 /

A change of personnel is unlikely to radically change England's fortunes against a side who are getting better and better in this series. The obvious bet is the good bet, says Michael Vaughan.

Very often when you lose a game of cricket you can go back and at least take some positives from it. The worrying thing for England is that really wasn't the case with Monday's match. Ok, Steve Finn bowled at over 90mph at times and continues to look a great prospect but that was about it.

We had five batsmen getting past 30 and failing to make a single half-century between them. I'll give Jonny Bairstow some slack because he's a young player on his first England tour and in fairness to Samit Patel, he got one that kept very low. But just like I said before that match, you need to get big scores in India to win games and unless someone does that, things aren't going to improve for England. And there's no excuse for someone not getting one. You only need to look at how easily Virat Kohli and Gautam Gambhir got to big scores to know there aren't too many demons in these wickets. And, while I've been impressed with the likes of Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin in the spin department, they're not exactly Muttiah Muralitharan just yet.

There's also a slight concern that at times the England lads are losing a bit of focus and getting too involved in little spats with the Indian players. When I captained England against India I was all for trying to get in their faces and unsettling them but you have to pick your battles and not forget what it is you're actually trying to do. On their own patch the likes of MS Dhoni, Kohli and Suresh Raina are going to give as good as they get in terms of the old 'verbals' because they're not afraid to get hit on the head as the wickets here have little or no bounce. So there isn't the same intimidation factor as in England.

Time for a change in England's XI? Well Ian Bell is waiting for his chance and the batsman looking most vulnerable is Craig Kieswetter. Andy Flower has the option of asking Bairstow to keep wicket and opening with Bell or Jonathan Trott. Kieswetter is looking like he's feeling the pressure of all this and desperately needs to make a big score. I think he'll still be picked for this match but we should side with the far more consistent Alastair Cook to outscore him at around [1.86].

Stuart Meaker might get a game just because he offers something a little different but it's anyone's guess who the Surrey paceman would come in for. But I wouldn't expect more than one change in the side for Thursday: this lot got England in this mess, this lot can get them out of it.

So it's India for me again at [1.7]. They were better than England in all three departments again the other day and there's no reason why that's going to change all of a sudden.

My last bet may seem like a brave one but hear me out. It's always risky to take on a centurion from the previous match (Kohli) but Kevin Pietersen looked really good till edging to the keeper and is hungry for a huge score, so I'm backing KP against Kohli at [2.0].

3 pts Back India to win @ [1.7]
2 pts Back Alastair Cook + 0.5 runs v Craig Kieswetter @ [1.82]
1 pt Back Kevin Pietersen + 0.5 runs v Virat Kohli @ [2.0]

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